Brain, Mind, and
Altered States of Consciousness


     Neurologists and psychologists for decades agreed that there were specific facts about the brain and intelligence that were unchanging:      However, psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted studies 1 which were to turn the world of brain and intelligence research upside down. They discovered that:      Neuroanatomist Marian Diamond proved that rats raised in "enriched environments" showed:       Later studies 2 showed that significant structural changes in the brains of rats in "enriched environments" can take place almost instantaneously.


     The human brain is about five times as large as that of a chimpanzee, yet contains only about 30 to 50 percent more neurons. The difference between humans and chimps comes from the development of cerebral cortex and the larger number of glial cells 3. The cerebral cortex is a layer of nerve cells forming a convoluted outer shell over the brain, the "thinking cap" or "gray matter" atop the brain, in which much of the thinking or higher intellectual activity of the brain takes place.

      All these studies focused on one conclusion: increased brain stimulation in an enriched environment produces not only a growth in size and weight of the cortex but completely alters and enriches the quality of the entire cerebral cortex.

Stimulating the Brain and Mind

      Human performance in all areas can be deliberately improved through environmental, biochemical, and psychophysiological manipulation of the brain and mind. One way this takes place is by using machines designed by researchers to stimulate the human neocortex through exposure to experiences which are novel, changing, and challenging, and which provide the brain and mind an opportunity to exercise itself by means of self-observation and self-transformation.

     The brain is an electrically powered and electricity- generating organ. Composed of an estimated one hundred billion neurons, each neuron produces and transmits electrical impulses which travel from the cell body down long fibers called axons until they reach a junction, or synapse, with another neuron. At the junction point the electrical impulses fire chemical messengers, called neurotransmitters, across the synaptic gap to receptors on the next cell. Having received the message, that neuron then generates its own electrical impulse and sends it to other neurons to which it is connected. Each neuron can be connected to thousands of other neurons, each simultaneously sending and receiving impulses to and from thousands of other neurons--so one neuron can electrically alter millions of other neurons.

     To get an idea of how complex this electrical system is, the National Academy of Sciences estimates that "a single human brain has a greater number of possible connections among its nerve cells than the total number of atomic particles in the universe."

     In our ordinary waking state, we primarily experience beta brain waves (which vibrate at a frequency ranging from about 13 to 30 hertz or cycles per second). During deep relaxation, we move to alpha waves (8-13 Hz) and we ordinarily only experience theta waves (4-7 Hz) in those brief moments between waking and sleeping. The ultraslow delta waves (0.5-4 Hz) occur during sleep.

     Scientists have found that when meditators reach a state of deep awareness and internal mental serenity the two hemispheres of their brain--which ordinarily generate brain waves of different frequencies and amplitudes--become synchronized, both hemispheres generating the same brain waves.

     In 1956, James Olds reported on research in which he had electrically stimulated the brains of rats. Implanting electrodes in rats' pleasure center of the brain, he attached a device that allowed the rats to activate the electrical impulse. He found that the rats would become so obsessed with self-stimulation that they would literally starve themselves to death.

     The human body has its own chemical self-stimulants, endorphins. Naturally produced in our bodies and brains, this group of molecules reduces pain, alleviates stress, gives pleasure, enhances or suppresses memories, and determines what information we allow into our brains.

     Dr. Robert Heath, head of the neurology/psychiatry department at Tulane University School of Medicine was the first to implant electrodes in the human brain. He found that each brain stimulus--pleasure or pain--is capable of overwhelming or inhibiting other stimuli. Thus, pleasure can overcome depression or pain and vice versa.

Biofeedback

     Biofeedback is the use of mechanical means to amplify certain internal cues, make us aware of them, and make it possible to control mental and brain states. Extensive research has shown that what were thought to be "involuntary" psychophysiological states, such as blood pressure, body temperature, etc., are in fact controllable through the use of biofeedback.


      "Biofeedback means getting immediate ongoing infomation about one's own biological processes or conditions, such as heart behavior, temperature, brain-wave activity, blood pressure, or muscle tension. Information is usually fed back by a meter, by a light or sound, or subjects simply watch the physiological record as it emerges from the monitoring equipment. Biofeedback training means using the information to change and control voluntarily the specific process or response being monitored."

Elmer Green, Beyond Biofeedback



     In 1958, Joe Kamiya, a psychologist teaching at the University of Chicago, began experiments on brain wave frequencies. Kamiya attached a sensing electrode to the left side of the back of the subjects's head--the left occiput, where alpha brain waves are move evident. When a tone sounded, the subject was to guess whether he was in alpha. Kamiya was able to tell if the subject's guess was correct from the EEG (electroencephalograph) readings and answered "correct" or "wrong." The first subject Kamiya worked with, Richard Bach, reported correctly 65% on the second day of testing, and on the fourth day was able to report correctly 100% of the time. In a second experiment, the subject was able to enter the alpha state or not enter the state on a specific cue. It was thus established that people could control brain waves which had been thought to be involuntary states. This was the beginning of brain wave biofeedback. Psychology Today did an article on Kamiya in 1968 and the field exploded.

     The first meeting of biofeedback professionals occurred as part of the 1968 International Brain and Behavior Conference in Colorado. The following year the first specific meeting of biofeedback researchers was held in Santa Monica, California, with 142 persons attending. It was at this meeting that the attendees decided to name their group the Biofeedback Research Society, later changed to Biofeedback Society of America and then to the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback.

     One of the early researchers, Elmer Green of the Menninger Clinic in Kansas, used biofeedback instruments to study Eastern yogis. He discovered that certain yogis could control their internal states merely through meditation and thought.

      Maurice "Barry" Sterman, a professor emeritus in the departments of Neurobiology and Psychiatry at UCLA, began an experiment in 1965 on brain wave states in cats. He accidentally discovered a specific EEG rhythm state during which the cat, waiting for a reward of food, became absolutely still, though extremely alert. Sterman named this frequency "sensorimotor rhythm" (SMR). He isolated the 12 to 15 hertz frequencies (SMR) in the EEG of the experimental cats and operantly conditioned them to create this state. Sterman then worked with a human subject, a young lady who suffered from epileptic seizures two or more times per month. Epilepsy is accompanied by an invasion of unwanted theta wave frequency in the brain. The subject was connected to the EEG equipment and was tasked with keeping a green light on (presence of SMR) and a red light off (presence of theta waves). The subject was able to create SMR for long periods and her seizures reduced in number and intensity. She remained seizure-free after the experiment for a number of months.

     Other researchers replicated Sterman's results with epilepsy and in 1982 Sterman received a research grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH). However, the disparity between biofeedback and ordinary medical procedures was becoming a major issue in the health care field and NIH pulled Sterman's funding. Ordinary medical procedures involve something being done to the "patient," the application of a drug, the use of surgery, etc. Biofeedback involves persons taking responsibility for their own conditions and actively participating in their therapy. Plus, biofeedback had arisen within psychology, not medicine.


      "Occassionally I had heard half-joking remarks about researchers in biofeedback sounding like snake-oil salesmen. It didn't bother me until one of our own doctors cautioned against the concept of biofeedback as a panacea. Then I gave it serious thought. Why did biofeedback prove helpful in the treatment of so many and varied disorders? Suddenly I realized that it isn't biofeedback that is the 'panacea'--it is the power within the human being to self-regulate, self-heal, re-balance. Biofeedback does nothing to the person; it is a tool for releasing that potential."

Alyce Green, Beyond Biofeedback



      The medical establishment began deriding biofeedback as an unproven, unscientific fad. The research of Sterman and others followed the most rigorous experimental requirements, but the medical mafia was intent on destroying this upstart phenomenon.

     In the 1970s and 1980s, biofeedback research languished, though a few brave persons pushed forward and today there is a resurgence in the field. Margaret Ayers, whose graduate training was in clinical neuropsychology, uses biofeedback therapy with different kinds of medical problems: drug addiction, alcoholism, head injury, stroke, cerebral palsy, and coma. Coma is the condition of a brain which is accompanied by dominant theta wave activity. The biofeedback equipment used with coma patients trains them to inhibit theta wave frequencies. A number of Ayer's coma clients have regained a great deal of their normal functioning. Siegfried and Sue Othmer, Ross Quackenbush, Eugene Peniston, Roger Werholtz, Lester Fehmi, Bob DeBoer, and others are using similar biofeedback procedures on clients with a diversity of medical or psychological problems.

Higher States

     Dr. Gerald Oster, a biophysicist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City discovered that pulsations called binaural beats occurred in the brain when tones of different frequency were presented separately to each ear.

      Robert Monroe developed tapes which send signals separately to each ear--signals of 400 and 404 hertz, for example--resulting in the sounds blending inside the brain and setting up a binaural beat frequency of 4 Hz (theta waves), producing a state of brain hemisphere equilibrium and altered states. At his Institute of Applied Sciences in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of central Virginia, Monroe trains people in achieving altered states using Hemi-Sync tapes. Some of the trainees feel they achieve out-of-body experiences. At present, a week's training session costs $1695 at the Institute, plus, of course, transportation to the Institute and back.

     Some brain state researchers are critical of Monroe's methods. Dr. Lester Fehmi, director of the Princeton Behavioral Medicine and Biofeedback Clinic, says that Monroe's effect is real, "but it doesn't teach you how to get there." Dr. Elmer Green of the Menninger Foundation agrees. "It's only when the volition is involved, and you want to do something, either to escape or to accomplish something, that you really learn something." The hypnogogic image states which Green discovered in his research sometime involve extra-sensory perception (ESP) and precognition. It may be that these states are the same as those which Monroe and his clients experience, which Monroe chooses to interpret as out-of-body states but Green interprets as hypnogogic imagery.

     There is a thriving biofeedback industry, with pricey training programs and pricey machines. Some of the machines run as high as $7,000 and one wonders why someone doesn't produce a reasonably-priced biofeedback machine for the average consumer who is also a serious student of altered states of consciousness.

Bibliography:
1Rosenzweig, Mark R. "Experience, Memory, and the Brain." American Psychologist, April 1984

2Ferchmin, P.A., and V.A. Eterovic. "Four Hours of Enriched Experience Are Sufficient to Increase Cortical Weight of Rats." Society for Neuroscience Abstracts, Vol. 6, p. 857

3Diamond's study of the brain of Albert Einstein showed that his brain contained more glial cells per neuron in all four of the brain areas compared with samples from brains of eleven normal males ranging from age forty-seven to eighty. Marian Diamond. "A Love Affair With the Brain." Discover, May, 1984

Return