Here’s some neuroscience you can play with at home.
According to just-published research a simple optical illusion can give you a real-time insight into your brain activity. Specifically, the strobing illusion will be in rhythm with, and according to the researchers will actually reflect, the alpha-wave electrical patterns being generated across your neurons.
Give it a try. Focus your eyes not on the center of the circle, but several inches to its left or right. Slowly sweep your vision in that area until you notice the center of the circle start pulsing or strobing:
Given that there doesn’t seem any likely way to prove or disprove this, Rodika Sokoliuk and Rufin Van Rullen (authors of the paper) posit that the flashing we see in the circle is an actual cycle-for-cycle look our alpha waves: synchronized electrical pulses that ripple across the forward (mostly occipital) regions of our brains, during relaxed consciousness. The cycle-frequency you see should be in concordance with the alpha rate of between 8-13 hertz, or about ten times per second.
If it is, and if that’s actually your visual cortex catching a glimpse of internal electrical activity, it’s still not clear whether this is an oddity, or the potential for a remarkably low-tech diagnostic tool. But still, play with it.
New, applied biofeedback. Spend some time putting yourself into various meditative states (lucky you, I’ve already written a book to show you just how). Then check your cycle count with Sokoliuk and Van Rullen’s magic circle. Might you glimpse the dreamy theta, or elusive delta?
Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it’s a chance to poke around inside your cabeza, and see what’s going on up there. You want to grab chances like that, whenever they come along.
