Brain Waves

In my last blog on Innovation, I promised that this post would be about brain waves and a new method to induce Alpha brain waves -so important to anyone wanting to ‘think outside the box’.

First of all, the strange picture on the left is of a person having an Ectroencephalograph [EEG] test of brain activity. Our whole nervous system is made up of neurons that can transmit information by passing electrical signals from one neuron to the next. The EEG records fluctuations resulting from electrical currents flowing along the neuron circuits in our brains. The recordings show what we call 'brain waves' - variations of strong and weak signals, differentiated by the distance between their peaks. The picture on the right shows the different types of brain waves and identifies the electrical activity going on in the brain when they were recorded.

Scientists measure the number of peaks in a second or Hertz [Hz] of brain waves, so that the Beta waves, which have between 13 to 30 peaks per second, is 13 – 30 Hz, Alpha wave frequency is 8 – 13 Hz,  Theta waves, 4 – 8 Hz and Delta wave peak frequency is less than 4 peaks per second.    

It didn’t take long after the different brain waves were classified before those in the field began to do experiments to try to induce the brain neuron circuits to take on a desired type of brain wave. One method they have come up with, is using sound waves.

 

Have you ever wondered why we have two ears? With only one, we can hear all right but we don't know where the sound is coming from. If a sound was coming from your right side for instance, it takes a measurable instant longer for it to reach your left ear. So our whole hearing system is exquisitely designed to distinguish between differences in the sounds coming into each ear. It’s called binaural hearing and a method has been discovered using our binaural hearing system to affect our brain wave frequency. 

For example, if you feed a pure tone with a frequency of 110 Hz into one ear, and a tone of 100 Hz into the other ear, when they mix they create a beat frequency of 10 Hz. The diagram on the left  shows that when the two top frequencies mesh, sometimes the sound is amplified and sometimes it's cancelled out and together they crate a slow beat - in this case, a beat of 10 Hz.  Humans can't hear a sound of 10 Hz but amazingly it can pull, or draw along after it, the EEG brain wave associated with Alpha brain waves.  

Using this method of mixing frequencies of slightly different tones into our separate ears with a small headset, we can actually  induce whatever brain waves we choose.  The result may be increase intuition or heightened creativity, increased learning ability, elimination of insomnia, induction of lucid dream states and so on.  

If you are interested in getting into a mind altered state without drugs – using the binaural beat system is very simple - you just buy the stereo CD's with the brain wave frequency you want on line . I find it all so incredible that trying it myself is the only way I will believe it. I’ll be interested in any feedback.  Rie

   

Innovation

I’ve often wondered about our amazing brains and how sometimes an idea or an insight just seems to pop into our consciousness from out of the blue.  That’s what needs to happen in a situation where you want to be innovative but trying to come up with a creative new idea doesn’t work. It can almost be compared to what happens to those with ADD – attention deficit disorder.  The more they try to concentrate on something, the less successful they are at it. So, if concentrating on a problem and trying to think of an innovative solution is the wrong thing to do – do you just relax and hope a creative solution pops into your mind?  The answer to that is a surprising Yes!

If you look for examples of companies that are very successful at coming up with original new ideas for products, probably the 3M company is one of the best. So far their employees have come up with more than 50 thousand different commodities for sale from post-it notes to packaged materials for lab tests! How do they do it?  It turns out that the company does encourage its staff to relax by taking regular breaks and they even provide lounges and gaming equipment where they can socialize and change their focus by doing something different. To top off the week they also have Friday afternoon beer and cake mixers – a very popular event. A successful electrical engineering company that is copying 3M’s lead in creating relaxing spaces for their staff, has added the stipulation that employees write any creative ideas they have on white boards available everywhere so others can see them.

So, although taking time to relax and being in contact with others proves to be the best way to elicit creative ideas, it is still pretty much of a mystery why it works and how to turn it on. The answers, in this ever more competitive world, have become so important for success that science has stepped in and is beginning to whittle away at discovering what is going on.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that measures where brain activity is occurring when you’re solving a problem logically, shows clearly that the dominant [usually the left hemisphere] of the brain is active. That’s no surprise but when you need solutions that require thinking ‘outside the box’ you must use the non-dominant right hemisphere. It is often described as the artistic side of the brain that is not logical or aware of time and seems to be involved in all sorts of things we are not conscious of.Taking an Electroencephalogram [EEG]  of the brain catches its activity in real-time and prints out a wavy pattern of electrical voltages we call brain waves. A busy brain occupied when we are performing complicated tasks, shows Beta waves in the brain and when you are relaxed, playing or walking or daydreaming, the brain waves are different and designated as Alpha waves. These distinctive Alpha waves are so related to the state we’re in when we get insights that when a scientist records the Alpha pattern occurring, they can predict the person’s likelihood of coming up with a novel idea before it actually happens.   

So the key to boosting innovative breakthroughs seems to be to increase Alpha brain waves. So relax.  My next blog is going to be about brain waves and new methods of how to induce Alpha wave activity. A word of caution from Steven Johnson is that a lot of bright ideas are not really useful and it takes time to invent something new.   Rie 

Handwriting Obsolete?

The pen keyboard is mightier than the sword.

This week I was passing over some old papers to the university Archivist of my alma mater. In the course of our conversation, I happened to ask him if he had many students who took on projects in the archives as part of a credit course.  His answer - that students couldn’t read ‘cursive writing’ any more - really took me by surprise and I was incredulous until I thought of how my grandchildren ‘write’ [on the rare occasions when they have to] - they all print instead. 

When you think about it, 20 year old university students were born in 1992 and so they likely have had access to a computer since they can remember.  By the time they were 10, smart phones were on the market so theirs is a digital world where the ‘norm’ is to have swift thumbs constantly text messaging or exploring the latest on Facebook.  They were taught handwriting in school but so seldom had to use it or read it, or even see examples of it, that it just didn’t really take.

So, is handwriting an ‘endangered species’? For even someone as old as I am it's threatened! Having taught science at university, I started using computers when they first came out [my first was a Commodore 64] and now my handwriting is so bad that when I write a letter to my ‘computer-challenged’ peers, I use
Edwardian script, then run off a print and send it by mail. I seem 

to get away with it and when I write several letters at Christmas with the similar messages I have to admit it’s very easy to personalize and duplicate them. 

When I came across the website about how others had forgotten to write, I felt better.  However, I still thought I was pretty good at reading any handwriting until I tried to read the memo on the right that was written by the head of the CIA at the time, Leon  Panetta. Fortunately I found the digital text online because I was  stumped by a couple of words.      

In a way it’s too bad that we no longer write letters because when you see a person’s handwriting it’s so distinctive of them, it often evokes your emotions.  There is a ‘science’ called Graphology that claims to be able to analyse a person’s character just by studying their handwriting.  Good luck to the experts with the modern generations! 

So, in this digital age how can Archivists possibly retrieve material on a desired subject out of their massive holdings of old handwritten papers?  Their long-term goal is to build an automatic search engine for their historical collections of handwritten documents. That will be no mean feat!   Rie 

Alzheimer’s Cure?

A friend who knows that my husband has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, sent me a link

to a website that had information on incorporating coconut oil in his diet to improve his condition.  I was just ‘blown away’ by what I read and viewed on video clips about this miraculous ‘cure’. If the coconut oil is started before the dementia is advanced, it can usually reverse the process and restore the person’s memory, energy and personality.

Like most people, for a long time I avoided anything to do with coconuts because there was so much talk some years ago about how it raised cholesterol levels and caused heard disease. That happened to be a case of a little knowledge being a bad thing. With more detailed research we now know that there are two kinds of ‘cholesterol’ – bad LDL and good HDL – and that coconut oil increases the level of the good HDL to the extent it tends to clear out the bad plaque blockages in your arteries.

It has been known for some time that Alzheimer’s disease is associated with the amyloid protein in the brain but the way it operates to cause Alzheimer’s was a mystery. Now studies show that the real cause is that the brain becomes resistant to the absorption of blood sugar. That means the brain cells die of starvation unless they have a source of a type of compound called ‘ketones’ that the brain cells can use as ‘food’ instead.  Ketones are scarce in the blood stream because to make them, the liver needs ‘medium chain triglerides’ [MCT] that are found in coconut oil. Unfortunately, the oil can provide only relatively low levels of ketones and, since the beneficial effect of ketones is directly related to the amount available in the blood, much better sources are been studied by Dr. Richard Veech. Hopefully a ketone ester will eventually be available in capsule form, and it would be a much easier way to ingest it for those who find it difficult to eat enough coconut oil.

In doing the research before writing this post, I found a lot of other good news about coconut oil and ketones. They can also greatly benefit those with other neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s disease, ALS [Lou Gehrig’s disease], epilepsy, dementia, schizophrenia, autism, etc.  It also helps those with sluggish metabolism because of hypothyroid problems and that results in weight loss of excess fat.

I found out that for those who are candidates for Alzheimer’s disease, the process of brain cell starvation actually starts 10-20 years before there are actual symptoms so its use especially as a cooking oil is a good plan especially if there is a history of demensia in your family.  A word of warning, check the label and be sure to get non hydrogenated, virgin coconut oil.   Rie

Moon Phases

In Canada we still celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday on the 24^th of May and, since it is adjusted to fall on the closest Monday to give us a long weekend, it is a public holiday tomorrow. Traditionally, this  is the day we plant our seedlings in the garden because it is so rare that we get a frost this late in May.  However, I checked using Google just the same to see the phase of the moon because I, like most people, believed that the nights with full moon are coldest and most likely to be frosty. To my surprise, I found that my firmly held conviction has no basis in fact and that the moon actually has no power to effect the weather at all!  It turns out to be one of those human quirks we have, where we clearly remember the times something that’s predicted does happen and easily forget the times it doesn’t.  It’s called ‘conformational bias’.

Like most people, until recently I couldn’t have explained why the moon waxes and wanes through monthly cycles until I found a video of a classroom demonstration and a diagram like the one on the right. To make sense of the diagram, you have to take into consideration that: 

1.We are looking down on one of the poles of the Earth in the centre as it is turning on its axis so in one 24 hour period we experience both day and night.  

2. The sunshine, coming in from the right hand side in the picture, shines only on one side of the moon all the time because the moon doesn't turn on it’s axis and 

3. the moon circles around the earth in roughly a month [29.53 days]. 

The diagram shows 8 positions of the moon represented by the circle of smaller moons all with just one face lit by sun.   

To understand why the moon is full once a month, start on the left hand side of the diagram and you see the larger outside picture of the moon is totally lit by the sun coming in from the right. The dotted line from Earth pointing to the full moon shows its position when it is directly overhead once a month. Now, going counter clockwise around the circle, the next dotted line with the small bracket at the end shows our view of the moon in that new position [the picture of the larger moon outside the circle is what we see].  Following the dotted lines around, when we come to the one pointing directly to the right, we can’t see any moon at all in that position because the sunlit side is away from us. The Earth is also shown sunlit on the right but remember it is turning on its axis and night will soon come – but still with no moon in sight. Three or 4 days later the dotted line gives our view where we see only a partly lit crescent moon and so on.

If you’re still having trouble visualize all the motions of the sun shining on the moon,  the moon moving around the earth and the earth rotating, it should be easier to envision if you click on this video.
 

As astronomers say when they sign off - Clear Skies!    Rie

Troglodyte Dwellings

I first heard the term ‘troglodyte’ used when we toured Tunisia in 2006 and read about troglodyte houses that had been discovered in the Sahara Desert. When I looked it up I found one of the definitions for ‘troglodyte’ was a member of a race that lived in caves or holes. [It’s also not a flattering name for an out-of-date person, sometimes including someone who is computer illiterate!]

Most troglodyte homes in Tunisia were discovered in a place called Matmata. It was not generally known until fairly recently that there were regular settlements in that area of the Sahara Desert that was thought to be just the territory of wandering nomadic desert tribes of Berbers. It turns out most Berbers built their dwellings by digging large pits about 15 or 20 feet deep and then carving out rooms in the walls. To enter, you have to walk down a narrow passageway that can be blocked off for safety sake in case of an attack by pillagers or any unwanted enemy. The open courtyard of a pit house is comfortably cool since hot air rises and the ground temperature is much cooler at that level than at the surface, which made living in the very hot desert amazingly comfortable. Some families are so large they occupy two or three smaller pits joined by trenches or passageways.  

The terrain and houses are so unique around Matmata that it was chosen as the base for making two episodes of the movie ‘Star Wars’ and also ‘The Raiders of the Lost Ark’ movie.  Click on the video and it takes you on a tour of one of the larger pit houses that was used in Star Wars movies. 

Open pit houses obviously can only work because there is very little rainfall in the desert but there were many other homes we saw that were dug into the side of a hill. Often there was an opening with no door and if the inhabitants were home, they appeared to be quite used to curious tourists like us visiting.

The most amazing 'troglodyte' complexes we have ever visited were in the Cappadocia area of Turkey where solidified volcanic ash makes for relatively easy digging. Over the centuries, perhaps since the Bronze Age, dozens of underground cities that can be as many as 8 stories down have been dug in the region. The reason for the extrordinaty effort it must have taken create these huge complexes was likely so inhabitants could block off entrances to survive the many invasions of their country especially after the fall of the Roman Empire. As seen in the picture above, they have large vent holes that are open from above ground wells and end conveniently in the underground water table.  Interconnecting passageways formed a huge network to many other subterranean cities and at one time the whole complex could hold tens of thousands of people with animals and provisions.

With global warming already making summers unbearably hot for some, especially in poorer undeveloped parts of the world, it is entirely possible future generations will have to resort to some form of troglodyte dwellings where they can escape from the heat. I have had a comfortable room built in the basement of our house to escape to. I find even during our Canadian summers we can get a few unbearably-hot-for-me days.  Rie  

Adrenalin Kick

‘Honesty is the best policy’ Anon

I heard a story this week about a medical doctor who, out of curiosity, took a lie detector test and discovered when he looked at the printout that it had many unstable places with spiking that indicated he had lied.Puzzled, since he knew he had been totally truthful, he checked the oral recording of the questions and his answers against the results and realized that each time he had made a wisecrack he must have had an adrenalin rush to which the machine reacted.Since it was a lifelong habit of his to make witticisms at every opportunity, he realized he must be addicted to the adrenalin kicks he was getting every time.

Polygraphs or ‘lie detectors’ of one sort of another have been around since the turn of the 20^th century and are used in many countries as an aid to groups such as law enforcement agencies and employment organizations. To eliminate the problem posed by our doctor friend, only yes or no answers are demanded of the person being tested.

The test is based on the theory that when a person lies, they involuntarily release certain hormones like adrenaline from an area deep in their brain. These hormones cause the famous ‘fight or flight’ reaction that makes their heart beat faster, increases their blood pressure and breathing rate and causes them to sweat. Getting all hooked up to take the test, I think would tend to make anyone anxious and for that reason, the examiner usually poses innocuous test questions and the results are checked over with a person to be tested to create a relaxed atmosphere.  To further reassure them, the person taking the test is also made familiar ahead of time with all the questions to be asked.

I was surprised when I looked up polygraph testing on the Internet to find a number of prominent sites that can teach you how to cheat the machine and pass the tests even if you are guilty.  Since they are now no longer believed to be infallible, in most places lie detector test results are not permissible as evidence in courts. This is most unfortunate since innocent people are sometimes jailed and criminals freed because of the ease with which lies can be told in court.

Fortunately, it is possible that modern science could be coming to the rescue. As with the important forensic successes now possible using reliable DNA identification tests, 21^st century neuroscientist are working toward an infallible lie detection test. Apparently two companies are doing research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines to do brain imaging to detect deception under controlled laboratory conditions.  The new ability that this machine provides to analyse what is happening inside someone’s head when they are actually telling a lie, presents serious ethical questions that will have to be sorted out in the courts before they could be used. Let us hope that in the future the threat of using these new methods will be enough to deter witnesses from lying when on the stand in court.   Rie