The consumer-grade EEG device from OCZ, the “Neural Impulse Actuator”, has started shipping. It can be bought (although stock seems empty) at least from play.com, with the price being 100 UK pounds (I will not play along with silly 99.99 prices).
A review can be read at Overclock3D.net.
No word yet about support for non-Windows platforms.
An article about enhancing cognition (with the aid of chemicals) in the Economist.
This here is a story what happened to a friend of mine. It relies on the fact that people enter a kind of trance-like state when they do something monotonous. Behold, the sequencing attack against coffee shop clerks!
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A hypnotist from Great Britain underwent a surgery without anaesthetic, opting instead to hypnotise himself to not feel the pain.
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Wired brings you: Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them.
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In order to make coloured noise (white, brown, pink) you do not have to spend even $35 to get a specialized commercial product. You can just download Audacity, an open source audio editor, and generate the noise files with that.
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The activity happening within the brain is electrochemical by its nature. When this activity is measured, it can be broken down into five major frequency bands: delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma. Roughly speaking, these bands correspond to certain biological states.
For example, delta waves are prominent in slow wave sleep (SWS, stage 4 of NREM). Beta waves are seen in normal waking state as well as intense thinking or concentration. Theta waves are seen with meditation, hypnosis, trances and other altered states of consciousness.
In other words, with a suitable measuring device, it is possible to get objective feedback about what your state of consciousness is.
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Coming soon: cheap and productized consumer-grade brain-computer interfaces (BCI). These “everyman’s EEG devices” are primarily sold as game controllers, but surely they could also be made into a tool for research and experimentation at home.
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Here is an interesting BBC Horizon document about sensory deprivation:
For the first time in 40 years Horizon re-creates a controversial sensory deprivation experiment. Six ordinary people are taken to a nuclear bunker and left alone for 48 hours. Three subjects are left alone in dark, sound-proofed rooms, while the other three are given goggles and foam cuffs, while white noise is piped into their ears.
To experiment with the Ganzfeld effect, you need to create a suitable Ganzfeld (or more if you aim for multi-modal Ganzfeld). One way to make a visual Ganzfeld are so-called “Ganzfeld goggles” and a bright light.
To build Ganzfeld goggles, you need ping-pong balls, some sandpaper, a sharp knife (for example those which are used to cut mats), a pencil, and about half an hour of time.
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