The History of Mind Machines

By infiniteone NeuroCognitive 1 Comment

Mind Machines are a modern way to use the brain’s natural frequency following response to modulate our brainwaves.

Flickering light-induced hallucinations have been around for a while right along with light therapy in general.

Antiquity

People have always looked up to the sun. It is a prominent feature in many beliefs across the globe. It is the life-giver, the center of our universe¹.

Fire is also often associated with life. Researchers and faiths alike consider it the starting point of our evolution as humans.

Flicker-induced hallucinations go back a long time. Our ancestors would gather around a fire for survival, to socialize, and to perform ceremonies in cultures around the world.

Have you ever stared into a bonfire? Watched the flames dance while surrounded by the darkness of night after the sun has set?

Fire has sparked the imagination of the primitive man since time immemorial. It can be a deeply meditative experience, something we have inherited from our ancestors and that is still effective today.

The flickering light of a fire has been the catalyst for dreams, storytelling, and social gatherings throughout human history. It features in many ancient ceremonies across multiple faiths.

Archeologists theorize that fire also aided in bringing ancient cave paintings to life during humanity’s early history. Members of the same family group would gather in a cave for the night. The flickering lights would dance across the painted walls and make the animal figures often depicted there to appear as though they were moving² ³.

There is a popular story about Catherine de Medici who had Nostradamus sit on her rooftop with his eyes closed. He would watch the sun through his splayed fingers and wave his hand in front of his face to witness prophecies. It is still unknown whether it is merely a legend or if it holds a grain of truth.

Contemporary studies

The 1800’s

Purkinje made one of the first official accounts of strobing lights causing hallucinations in 1819. He saw patterns like crosses, stars, and spirals while waving his hand between his eyes and a gaslight lamp in a similar fashion to Nostradamus.

His contemporary, Brewster, had similar results by running alongside evenly spaced vertical railings and looking towards the sun. The Scottish physicist likened the checkboard patterns to the ‘brightest tartan’.

Helmholtz investigated further and recorded his findings in ‘Physiological Optics’. He coined the term ‘shadow patterns’.

The 1900’s

This phenomenon faded into obscurity until the invention of the EEG by Berger in the 1920’s. The effects of flashing lights on the brain became interesting again since scientists could map the electric activity in the brain.

In 1934, Adrian and Matthews used the lights of an automobile’s headlights shining through rotating wheel spokes to generate a flickering rhythmic light at frequencies ranging between 8 and 12 Hz – the Alpha brainwave range. They imposed a ‘coordinated beat’ on the alpha rhythm of a test person who was sitting in front of the lamp with their eyes closed.

But the technology of the time limited their methods. In order to increase the frequency of the flicker, they needed to turn the wheel faster, which in turn shortened the duration of the flashes.

The advent of technology

Electronic stroboscopes, which appeared shortly after the Second World War, helped to overcome this difficulty.

Finally, visual hallucinations could be studied in the laboratory.

Walter wrote in his book ‘The Living Brain’ about “whirling spirals, whirlpools, explosions … In testing a device to study epilepsy we had stumbled on one of those natural paradoxes which are the surest sign of a hidden truth”.

In the 1950’s, Costa categorizes hallucinations in three different subsets:

Autoscopic – Represented as ‘ramifications of retinal veins’ and ‘hexagonal cells of the choroid’.
Geometric – Radial figures, stripes, or waves.
Hallucinatory images – Some individuals even experienced complex hallucinations in the shape of animals.

Laboratory studies

Later, at the Psychological Laboratory of Cambridge, UK, Smythies undertook a series of large-scale studies. He then divided the stroboscopic images into ‘dark phase’ and ‘light phase’ patterns.

The ‘bright phases’ are characterized by geometric patterns which can be dominated by straight lines (crosses, diamonds, triangles) or curved lines (circles, vortexes, or fingerprint patterns). He labeled the recurring geometric figures ‘form constants’ and noted they could be elicited by other means like psychedelic drugs, sleep (hypnagogic hallucinations), or near-death experiences.

On the other hand, the ‘dark phases’ are more irregular and he distinguished them in several categories:

Amorphous, featuring two colors, usually red and green which swirled around like oil on water.
Small objects moving, like ‘ant hills’ or ‘aerial photo of a city’
Stationary patterns like inkblots or leaves
Watery patterns
Design patterns like wallpaper
Animated patterns like in a movie
Scenes or landscapes like fish in an aquarium or plains of moving grass and swaying forests

Theories and hypotheses

Smythies reached several explanations for the hallucinations. He hypothesizes that the patterns represented retinal structures such as vessels or pigmented cells – which can account for a small part of them (the autoscopic hallucinations seen in Costa’s study). Or a theory based on Walter’s original idea that the Alpha waves represent a visual scanning mechanism caused by interference between it and the flickering light.

The third hypothesis was that the images come spontaneously, created by the brain randomly while it tries to make sense of the stimulus.

The fourth hypothesis was that the images are caused by the stimulation of certain circuits between the retina and the cortical neurons. Ffytche forwarded that they represent a shift in thalamocortical activity from a tonic mode to a burst mode, where the retinal signals which would be transmitted faithfully to the cortex would shift to being partly dissociated and trigger the hallucination.

The theory states that hallucinations are not caused by altering activity in certain brain areas (topological) but by changing the connectivity between different areas (hodological).

In 1958, Kamya – a psychologist from Chicago, discovered that the brain could be trained to identify Alpha states after being repeatedly exposed to the right frequencies. He reported that it was ‘profoundly relaxing’.

The Dreamachine

Eventually, Burroughs discovers the flicker phenomenon from his friend Brion Gysin and they become interested in the effects on the brain after reading “The Living Brain”. Together with Sommerville, a mathematician, they created The Dreamachine. (Fig 1)

Fig 1. Dream Machine building plan

It is made from a cylinder with regularly spaced shapes cut out of its sides, which is then placed on a record turntable and rotated, depending on the scale, at either 78 or 45 rpm. By placing a light bulb to illuminate the center and they optained modulated light.

As the machine rotates, it emanates light from the holes at a consistently pulsating frequency of 8-12 Hz – which we know is the Alpha wave range.

They described the effects as a ‘drugless high’.

There was an attempt to commercialize the invention, even a meeting with Philips Corporation representatives. Unfortunately, the company saw no commercial value in the device and feared the effect it might have on photosensitive or epileptic individuals.

Mind Machines in the last fifty years

As technology advanced, so did the Mind Machines. In addition to light stimulation, binaural beats were thrown into the mix too. Thus eliciting an even deeper response from the human brain.

There are plenty of examples of ‘Light & Sound Machines’ created in the 1970’s, when the concept experienced another boom in popularity.

Tools for exploration, Volume VII, winter/spring 1996, pg 10, 11

Conclusion

As we can see, what started as a curiosity in the early days of science became a complex mechanism underlying specific visual hallucinations that contribute to a state of bliss, relaxation, and happiness.

If you’d like to try one of the more modern Mind Machines, take a look at our shop and try them for yourself!