Page 1 of 1
Hypnosis Machine?

Posted:
May 7th, 2007, 1:18 pm
by Meepy
Judge for yourselves:
http://www.digg.com/health/Machine_Gives_Full_Night_s_Sleep_In_3_Hours
If they can put people to sleep by altering their brain waves, what is stopping them from putting people in suggestive state?
At any rate, I'm already getting devilish ideas...:twisted:

Posted:
May 7th, 2007, 8:13 pm
by Jacara
Wow, I'd never heard of this, so I looked for other references to "transcranial magnetic stimulation" and it's apparently legitimate.
It seems similar to the way flashing lights or binaurals affect the brain, only with magnets & more effective. I would definitely think this could be used for hypnotic purposes. Worth a second look.

Posted:
May 9th, 2007, 12:10 am
by aviant

Posted:
May 9th, 2007, 3:57 pm
by Jacara

Posted:
May 9th, 2007, 4:46 pm
by Meepy
Good thinking looking up the abstract aviant. I find this article mostly interesting because they have shown a truly 'noninvasive' control over brain wave activity that does not utilize any of the human senses; it is a purely external method of stimulation. Next time on a college campus I'll look it up and see how much they were able to increase EEG slow-wave activity. I will also ask my girlfriend what she thinks about it (she is a neuroscience graduate student).

Posted:
May 9th, 2007, 10:09 pm
by aviant
Jacara, one is better not to assume anything in this field. Long time ago Samuel Hahnemann tried curing people by asumptions and most of the time it didn't work (although as a talented physician he discovered a lot of things including homeopathy and quarantine).
I suppose it takes a professional to understand everything in the abstract, but it is far better than reading tabloid-like blabber.
Meepy, noninvasive methods for gaining some control over brain are not something new. After all schizoid patients were treated with electric shocks and unless I'm mistaken it is still used on some occasions. Ask your girlfriend about the article and please keep us updated.

Posted:
May 10th, 2007, 2:40 pm
by Blink

Posted:
May 12th, 2007, 8:40 am
by tsd
its certainly an interesting theory.... and one which if proven to be useful could have valuable applications both in and out of medicine... and while it would be cool, i still look at it wiht some trepidation.
last year i had an MRI scan and i can honestly say it terrified me. the fact i will probably need to have more as time goes on terrifies me even more... so unless they made this VERY user friendly its not something that i think people would necessarily want to use for recreational purposes.

Posted:
May 15th, 2007, 1:44 am
by aviant
Blink, I don't argue that ECT is rather outdated and far from harmless for the patient, I was just arguing that using electric or magnetic currents is something new.
As for the strong magnetic fields, there was a research on the regenerative properties of lizards, when in strong magnetic fields. The reparative regeneration was severely impaired, but iirc there were no tumors. I don't know what side effects will they have on human brain (after all it does not regenerate), but I'm not very eager to find out by myself too.

Posted:
May 15th, 2007, 5:39 am
by Blink

Posted:
May 15th, 2007, 6:03 am
by aviant
I don't know for the Scandinavian countries, but the Soviets surely had regulations for minimal distance of such lines to habitable buildings and minimal height. They are probably still there in most of the ex-Soviet countries.