Subject: RE: [hackers-il] Sounds like a teen spirit...

From: Omer Musaev <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 12:25:18 +0200

If so, then my latency is probably higher than a week. Well...

--
Omer Mussaev
Software Engineer, EMS team, APM R&D
Mercury Interactive

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nadav Har'El [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2003 12:05 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [hackers-il] Sounds like a teen spirit...
> 
> On Sun, Mar 23, 2003, Omer Musaev wrote about "[hackers-il] Sounds like a
> teen spirit...":
> > http://www.linuxlabs.com/autozen.html
> >
> > No comments. Yet.
> 
> Isn't this "brain machine for Linux" announcement a week early? :)
> 
> --
> Nadav Har'El                        |     Sunday, Mar 23 2003, 19 Adar II
> 5763
> [email-masked]             |-------------------------------------
> ----
> Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |The meek shall inherit the Earth, for
> http://nadav.harel.org.il           |they are too timid to refuse it.
> 
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---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 12:48:07 +0200

> If so, then my latency is probably higher than a week. Well...

I looked deeper, and it appears that there's indeed source code on that
site. So either it is a very eleborate and premature April Fools joke, or
it's a real free software... I guess that one person's junk is another
person's free software ;)

Some quotes from the manual page:

  "AutoZen is a software 'brain machine' for Linux."

  "To our knowledge, the medical community has done very little research into
   these devices, and they may very well do nothing at all. The author has
   used AutoZen with good results, perhaps because he meditates regularly,
   employs wishful thinking, or is just strange."

  "AutoZen is not recommended for anyone with a seizure disorder or who is
   under psychiatric care."

:)

If anybody here actually tries this, tell us how it went!

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Sunday, Mar 23 2003, 19 Adar II 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Seen on the back of a dump truck:
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |<---PASSING SIDE . . . . . SUICIDE--->

---

From: guy keren <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 13:46:39 +0200 (IST)

> If anybody here actually tries this, tell us how it went!

it does what it claims it does - thought under gnome here, it emits no 
sound. only using its utility to generate wav files, generats a wav file 
that makes the claimed sounds.

ofcourse, it still might be a joke. 'relax.seq' did not quite made me 
relax - it just made a 'whole' in my ears ;) note that i listened via 
speakers, not headphones as 'required'.

-- 
guy

"For world domination - press 1,
 or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator." -- nob o. dy

---

From: Arik Baratz <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 23:54:28 +0200

> If anybody here actually tries this, tell us how it went!

Hi all

I haven't tried AudioZen, but I did try BWGen, MindSync and CoolEdit - 
all have the same basic functionality. Since the technical explaination 
is long, I will note that down below I do mention my own experience with 
this technology, which is non-negligable.

The reasoning is as follows:

1. We all know that there are dominent frequencies in the brain when it 
is active.
2. We all know that these frequencies change, and that these changes 
occur with strong correlation to what we do and what we preceive as our 
'state of consciousness'.
3. Those frequencies has long been established and classified - they are 
used in EEG study successfuly. The main four ones are Delta, Theta, Alfa 
and Beta (around 3Hz, 6Hz, 8Hz and 15Hz respectively, associated with 
deep sleep, hallucinations/dreams, hypnosis/meditation and wakefullness, 
respecively).

An assumption: If the brain emits these kind of frequencies when being 
in these states, it may be possible to get the brain into these states 
by modifying in some way the dominant frequencies in the EEG.

Method no.1 - direct cortical stimulation. I don't know of any actual 
experiments done with this kind of stimuli, I only heard rumors. Google 
away. Note that this have nothing to do with ECT - Electroshock 
Convulsive Therapy - which is causing an epileptic-like seizure in a 
person, when the EEG looks like static.

Method no.2 - visual stimulation - light is used to stimulate the brain 
by means of the optic nerves. I think that some studies have been done 
on this subject, if only to discover why epileptic kids get seizures 
when playing computer games.

Method no.3 - auditory stimulation - stimulation using sound.

Let's focus on no.3 - because this is the reason for this software.

It is technically very difficult to deliver very low frequencies to the 
brain through the ears, because of two factors:
1. The ears are not sensitive to this range (we are talking 0.5Hz to 25Hz)
2. You will need expensive and huge loudspeakers

But there are alternative ways, two of them which I know about rely on 
the idea of binaural sound - sound delivered to both ears from slightly 
different sources, by means of headphones. When the brain integrates the 
sound from the two sources, the sum of the sound as well as the 
subtraction of the sounds is generated in the brain. This is called 
intermodulation.

Method no.1, which is employed by many small utilities as well as BWGen, 
is to generate two sine waves with similar amplitude but different 
frequency, and feed each one to a different ear. For instance, if you 
feed 500Hz and 505Hz, both are well within the dynamic range of a shitty 
earphone, you hear (in addition to the two base frequencies) 1005Hz and 5Hz.

Method no.2, which is employed by WinSyn and CoolEdit, is more 
sophisticated - they take a mono signal, and phase-modulate the low 
frequency signal on it. They create two signals where in one the 
modulation is in one direction (say, a positive deriviative of the 
waveform is translated to a reduction of the frequency) and the other 
signal is modulated the other way. When the signal is mixed the 
resulting envelope is very similar to method no.1 - with the advantage 
that this method can use any signal source (like your favorite nature 
music).

With both methods, the low frequency is audible - like a 'beat' or a 
'chopper' sound. It is very easy to determine that the mixing is done in 
your head - you just remove one of the ear pieces and it stops. Remove 
the other - it stops again. Replace both earpieces - the beat is there.

Now we get to the interesting part - does it work? i.e. does it have an 
effect on your brain?

I did not measured the change with an EEG machine. Some say they have 
and it is effective. Incidentally, these same sites try to sell you 
their mind machines, so they may be biased. I plan to check it out one day.

I do have a good deal of experience with the subjective influence of 
these binaural sounds, and in my subjective opinion it works very well.

It does take some experience to create your own sessions, until you find 
something that works for you.

What do I mean by saying 'it works'? Well, you do get sleepy when you 
set it to the delta range. I know certain settings can put me to sleep 
very easily. Some do it so fast that I experience 'time loss' - I notice 
that I am awake, and it feels like 5 minutes has passed, when in fact 
the session was 45 minutes long. It feels... eerie.

Other experiments I have made involve alpha waves with short dips into 
the theta waves. These setups create very interesting creative bursts, 
or in Ofir's words 'disjoint threads of thougt'. It feels like being in 
a state of meditation or light trance, and then you drift into this 
semi-dreamy state where you see visual, vivid dreams or visualizations, 
and then they recede and you are pondering the experience logically, and 
then the cycle repeats. Cool.

The effect is not so strong that you can't escape it. If you don't want 
to fall asleep, you won't. But if you just lay back and relax, you'll 
feel the effect.

I have heard people describe so called 'trips' from psycho-active 
chemicals with somewhat similar experience. To those I say - using this 
technology you can 'design' your 'trip', it lacks many of the dangers in 
using chemicals (although it introduces the danger of having an 
epileptic seizure if you are sensitive - very rare), and you can 
willfuly 'snap out of it' to reality, feeling wide awake and 
concentrated, in a matter of seconds.

There are people around the world who say that they can create 
out-of-body experiences or extra-sensual perception, but I have never 
experienced any of those, nor did I attempt to. I did notice the 
reported effect of needing less sleep (and in fact waking up 
uncharacteristically very early in the morning) when I spend some time 
in the Theta range.

My holy grail is to build an EEG machine, and connect it to a computer. 
Then I'd write software to play binaural sounds and measure their effect 
on the brain, and compensate the effect to create precisely the EEG that 
I want. This is going to be very interesting to experience, and more 
effective than just sounding those binaural beats and hoping for the best.

If anyone wishes I can provide some more information on the subject, as 
well as my favorite receips. For now here are some relevant links:

BWGen - Shareware that uses the two frequencies method, has very 
elaborate scripting capabilities and the site has a vast collection of 
scripts - http://www.bwgen.com

CoolEdit - A sound editing software, which has the brain synchronization 
audio effect - uses the phase modulation method - http://www.cooledit.com

MindSync - A predecessor of CoolEdit, it is a Win16 program, 
downloadable from several places including this one - 
http://www.nlpinfo.com/mindsync/index.shtml (and others)

Monroe institute - they cell CDs that contain binaural sounds.

The main dominant frequency ranges - 
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Clinical_Neurosciences/louis/eegfreq.html

The OpenEEG project - schematics and programs for an EEG machine - 
http://openeeg.sourceforge.net

-- Arik

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From: "David" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 21:49:23 +0100

Cool ... We were doing this sound project for school (physics) as a kinda
final work for physics (only we have several small ones ... )

Thx for the info ... Really interesting

David Savoir
Antwerp-Belgium