Mind Control by Cell Phone
By R. Douglas Fields
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=mind-control-by-cell

Electromagnetic signals from cell phones can change your brainwaves
and behavior. But don't break out the aluminum foil head shield just
yet.


Hospitals and airplanes ban the use of cell phones, because their
electromagnetic transmissions can interfere with sensitive electrical
devices. Could the brain also fall into that category? Of course, all
our thoughts, sensations and actions arise from bioelectricity
generated by neurons and transmitted through complex neural circuits
inside our skull. Electrical signals between neurons generate
electric fields that radiate out of brain tissue as electrical waves
that can be picked up by electrodes touching a person's scalp.
Measurements of such brainwaves in EEGs provide powerful insight into
brain function and a valuable diagnostic tool for doctors. Indeed, so
fundamental are brainwaves to the internal workings of the mind, they
have become the ultimate, legal definition drawing the line between
life and death.

Brainwaves change with a healthy person's conscious and unconscious
mental activity and state of arousal. But scientists can do more with
brainwaves than just listen in on the brain at work-they can
selectively control brain function by transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS). This technique uses powerful pulses of
electromagnetic radiation beamed into a person's brain to jam or
excite particular brain circuits.

Although a cell phone is much less powerful than TMS, the question
still remains: Could the electrical signals coming from a phone
affect certain brainwaves operating in resonance with cell phone
transmission frequencies? After all, the caller's cerebral cortex is
just centimeters away from radiation broadcast from the phone's
antenna. Two studies provide some revealing news.

The first, led by Rodney Croft, of the Brain Science Institute,
Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, tested
whether cell phone transmissions could alter a person's brainwaves.
The researchers monitored the brainwaves of 120 healthy men and women
while a Nokia 6110 cell phone—one of the most popular cell phones in
the world—was strapped to their head. A computer controlled the
phone's transmissions in a double-blind experimental design, which
meant that neither the test subject nor researchers knew whether the
cell phone was transmitting or idle while EEG data were collected.
The data showed that when the cell phone was transmitting, the power
of a characteristic brain-wave pattern called alpha waves in the
person's brain was boosted significantly. The increased alpha wave
activity was greatest in brain tissue directly beneath to the cell
phone, strengthening the case that the phone was responsible for the
observed effect.

Alpha Waves of Brain
Alpha waves fluctuate at a rate of eight to 12 cycles per second
(Hertz). These brainwaves reflect a person's state of arousal and
attention. Alpha waves are generally regarded as an indicator of
reduced mental effort, "cortical idling" or mind wandering. But this
conventional view is perhaps an oversimplification. Croft, for
example, argues that the alpha wave is really regulating the shift of
attention between external and internal inputs. Alpha waves increase
in power when a person shifts his or her consciousness of the
external world to internal thoughts; they also are the key brainwave
signatures of sleep.

Cell Phone Insomnia
If cell phone signals boost a person's alpha waves, does this nudge
them subliminally into an altered state of consciousness or have any
effect at all on the workings of their mind that can be observed in a
person's behavior? In the second study, James Horne and colleagues at
the Loughborough University Sleep Research Centre in England devised
an experiment to test this question. The result was surprising. Not
only could the cell phone signals alter a person's behavior during
the call, the effects of the disrupted brain-wave patterns continued
long after the phone was switched off.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=mind-control-by-cell

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=mind-control-by-cell&page=2

"This was a completely unexpected finding," Horne told me. "We didn't
suspect any effect on EEG [after switching off the phone]. We were
interested in studying the effect of mobile phone signals on sleep
itself." But it quickly became obvious to Horne and colleagues in
preparing for the sleep-research experiments that some of the test
subjects had difficulty falling asleep.

Horne and his colleagues controlled a Nokia 6310e cell phone—another
popular and basic phone—attached to the head of 10 healthy but sleep-
deprived men in their sleep research lab. (Their sleep had been
restricted to six hours the previous night.) The researchers then
monitored the men's brainwaves by EEG while the phone was switched on
and off by remote computer, and also switched
between "standby," "listen" and "talk" modes of operation for 30
minute intervals on different nights. The experiment revealed that
after the phone was switched to "talk" mode a different brain-wave
pattern, called delta waves (in the range of one to four Hertz),
remained dampened for nearly one hour after the phone was shut off.
These brainwaves are the most reliable and sensitive marker of stage
two sleep—approximately 50 percent of total sleep consists of this
stage—and the subjects remained awake twice as long after the phone
transmitting in talk mode was shut off. Although the test subjects
had been sleep-deprived the night before, they could not fall asleep
for nearly one hour after the phone had been operating without their
knowledge.

Although this research shows that cell phone transmissions can affect
a person's brainwaves with persistent effects on behavior, Horne does
not feel there is any need for concern that cell phones are damaging.
The arousal effects the researchers measured are equivalent to about
half a cup of coffee, and many other factors in a person's
surroundings will affect a night's sleep as much or more than cell
phone transmissions.

"The significance of the research," he explained, is that although
the cell phone power is low, "electromagnetic radiation can
nevertheless have an effect on mental behavior when transmitting at
the proper frequency." He finds this fact especially remarkable when
considering that everyone is surrounded by electromagnetic clutter
radiating from all kinds of electronic devices in our modern world.
Cell phones in talk mode seem to be particularly well-tuned to
frequencies that affect brainwave activity. "The results show
sensitivity to low-level radiation to a subtle degree. These findings
open the door by a crack for more research to follow. One only
wonders if with different doses, durations, or other devices, would
there be greater effects?"

Croft of Swinburne emphasizes that there are no health worries from
these new findings. "The exciting thing about this research is that
it allows us to have a look at how you might modulate brain function
and this [look] tells us something about how the brain works on a
fundamental level." In other words, the importance of this work is in
illuminating the fundamental workings of the brain-scientists can now
splash away with their own self-generated electromagnetic waves and
learn a great deal about how brainwaves respond and what they do.

Mind Matters is edited by Jonah Lehrer, the science writer behind the
blog The Frontal Cortex and the book Proust was a Neuroscientist.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Doug Fields is a developmental neuroscientist and Editor-in-Chief of
Neuron Glia Biology.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=mind-control-by-cell&page=2

The REAL brain drain: Modern technology - including violent video
games - is changing the way our brains work, says neuroscientist
By SUSAN GREENFIELD

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.
html?in_article_id=565207&in_page_id=1965>

Human identity, the idea that defines each and every one of us, could
be facing an unprecedented crisis.

It is a crisis that would threaten long-held notions of who we are,
what we do and how we behave. It goes right to the heart - or the
head - of us all.

This crisis could reshape how we interact with each other, alter what
makes us happy, and modify our capacity for reaching our full
potential as individuals.

And it's caused by one simple fact: the human brain, that most
sensitive of organs, is under threat from the modern world.

Video games are weakening the ability to think for ourselves

Unless we wake up to the damage that the gadget-filled,
pharmaceutically-enhanced 21st century is doing to our brains, we
could be sleepwalking towards a future in which neuro-chip technology
blurs the line between living and non-living machines, and between
our bodies and the outside world.


It would be a world where such devices could enhance our muscle
power, or our senses, beyond the norm, and where we all take a daily
cocktail of drugs to control our moods and performance.


Already, an electronic chip is being developed that could allow a
paralysed patient to move a robotic limb just by thinking about it.

As for drug manipulated moods, they're already with us - although so
far only to a medically prescribed extent.


Increasing numbers of people already take Prozac for depression,
Paxil as an antidote for shyness, and give Ritalin to children to
improve their concentration.

But what if there were still more pills to enhance or "correct" a
range of other specific mental functions?


What would such aspirations to be "perfect" or "better" do to our
notions of identity, and what would it do to those who could not get
their hands on the pills? Would some finally have become more equal
than others, as George Orwell always feared?


Of course, there are benefits from technical progress - but there are
great dangers as well, and I believe that we are seeing some of those
today.


I'm a neuroscientist and my day-to-day research at Oxford University
strives for an ever greater understanding - and therefore maybe, one
day, a cure - for Alzheimer's disease.


But one vital fact I have learnt is that the brain is not the
unchanging organ that we might imagine.

It not only goes on developing, changing and, in some tragic cases,
eventually deteriorating with age, it is also substantially shaped by
what we do to it and by the experience of daily life.

When I say "shaped", I'm not talking figuratively or metaphorically;
I'm talking literally.

At a microcellular level, the infinitely complex network of nerve
cells that make up the constituent parts of the brain actually change
in response to certain experiences and stimuli.


The brain, in other words, is malleable - not just in early childhood
but right up to early adulthood, and, in certain instances, beyond.

The surrounding environment has a huge impact both on the way our
brains develop and how that brain is transformed into a unique human
mind.


Of course, there's nothing new about that: human brains have been
changing, adapting and developing in response to outside stimuli for
centuries.


What prompted me to write my book is that the pace of change in the
outside environment and in the development of new technologies has
increased dramatically.

This will affect our brains over the next 100 years in ways we might
never have imagined.


Our brains are under the influence of an ever- expanding world of new
technology: multichannel television, video games, MP3 players, the
internet, wireless networks, Bluetooth links - the list goes on and
on.


But our modern brains are also having to adapt to other 21st century
intrusions, some of which, such as prescribed drugs like Ritalin and
Prozac, are supposed to be of benefit, and some of which, such as
widelyavailable illegal drugs like cannabis and heroin, are not.


Electronic devices and pharmaceutical drugs all have an impact on the
micro- cellular structure and complex biochemistry of our brains. And
that, in turn, affects our personality, our behaviour and our
characteristics. In short, the modern world could well be altering
our human identity.


Three hundred years ago, our notions of human identity were vastly
simpler: we were defined by the family we were born into and our
position within that family. Social advancement was nigh on
impossible and the concept of "individuality" took a back seat.


That only arrived with the Industrial Revolution, which for the first
time offered rewards for initiative, ingenuity and ambition.

Suddenly, people had their own life stories - ones which could be
shaped by their own thoughts and actions. For the first time,
individuals had a real sense of self.


But with our brains now under such widespread attack from the modern
world, there's a danger that that cherished sense of self could be
diminished or even lost.


Anyone who doubts the malleability of the adult brain should consider
a startling piece of research conducted at Harvard Medical School.

There, a group of adult volunteers, none of whom could previously
play the piano, were split into three groups.


The first group were taken into a room with a piano and given
intensive piano practise for five days. The second group were taken
into an identical room with an identical piano - but had nothing to
do with the instrument at all.


And the third group were taken into an identical room with an
identical piano and were then told that for the next five days they
had to just imagine they were practising piano exercises.


The resultant brain scans were extraordinary. Not surprisingly, the
brains of those who simply sat in the same room as the piano hadn't
changed at all.


Equally unsurprising was the fact that those who had performed the
piano exercises saw marked structural changes in the area of the
brain associated with finger movement.


But what was truly astonishing was that the group who had merely
imagined doing the piano exercises saw changes in brain structure
that were almost as pronounced as those that had actually had
lessons.

"The power of imagination" is not a metaphor, it seems; it's real,
and has a physical basis in your brain.

Alas, no neuroscientist can explain how the sort of changes that the
Harvard experimenters reported at the micro-cellular level translate
into changes in character, personality or behaviour.

But we don't need to know that to realise that changes in brain
structure and our higher thoughts and feelings are incontrovertibly
linked.


What worries me is that if something as innocuous as imagining a
piano lesson can bring about a visible physical change in brain
structure, and therefore some presumably minor change in the way the
aspiring player performs, what changes might long stints playing
violent computer games bring about?

That eternal teenage protest of 'it's only a game, Mum' certainly
begins to ring alarmingly hollow.


Already, it's pretty clear that the screen-based, two dimensional
world that so many teenagers - and a growing number of adults -
choose to inhabit is producing changes in behaviour.

Attention spans are shorter, personal communication skills are
reduced and there's a marked reduction in the ability to think
abstractly.


This games-driven generation interpret the world through screen-
shaped eyes. It's almost as if something hasn't really happened until
it's been posted on Facebook, Bebo or YouTube.


Add that to the huge amount of personal information now stored on the
internet - births, marriages, telephone numbers, credit ratings,
holiday pictures - and it's sometimes difficult to know where the
boundaries of our individuality actually lie.

Only one thing is certain: those boundaries are weakening.


And they could weaken further still if, and when, neurochip
technology becomes more widely available.

These tiny devices will take advantage of the discovery that nerve
cells and silicon chips can happily co-exist, allowing an interface
between the electronic world and the human body.

One of my colleagues recently suggested that someone could be fitted
with a cochlear implant (devices that convert sound waves into
electronic impulses and enable the deaf to hear) and a skull-mounted
micro- chip that converts brain waves into words (a prototype is
under research).


Then, if both devices were connected to a wireless network, we really
would have arrived at the point which science fiction writers have
been getting excited about for years. Mind reading!


He was joking, but for how long the gag remains funny is far from
clear.


Today's technology is already producing a marked shift in the way we
think and behave, particularly among the young.


I mustn't, however, be too censorious, because what I'm talking about
is pleasure. For some, pleasure means wine, women and song; for
others, more recently, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll; and for millions
today, endless hours at the computer console.


But whatever your particular variety of pleasure (and energetic sport
needs to be added to the list), it's long been accepted that 'pure'
pleasure - that is to say, activity during which you truly "let
yourself go" - was part of the diverse portfolio of normal human
life. Until now, that is.


Now, coinciding with the moment when technology and pharmaceutical
companies are finding ever more ways to have a direct influence on
the human brain, pleasure is becoming the sole be-all and end-all of
many lives, especially among the young.


We could be raising a hedonistic generation who live only in the
thrill of the computer-generated moment, and are in distinct danger
of detaching themselves from what the rest of us would consider the
real world.


This is a trend that worries me profoundly. For as any alcoholic or
drug addict will tell you, nobody can be trapped in the moment of
pleasure forever. Sooner or later, you have to come down.


I'm certainly not saying all video games are addictive (as yet, there
is not enough research to back that up), and I genuinely welcome the
new generation of "brain-training" computer games aimed at keeping
the little grey cells active for longer.


As my Alzheimer's research has shown me, when it comes to higher
brain function, it's clear that there is some truth in the adage "use
it or lose it".

However, playing certain games can mimic addiction, and that the
heaviest users of these games might soon begin to do a pretty good
impersonation of an addict.


Throw in circumstantial evidence that links a sharp rise in diagnoses
of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and the associated three-
fold increase in Ritalin prescriptions over the past ten years with
the boom in computer games and you have an immensely worrying
scenario.


But we mustn't be too pessimistic about the future.

It may sound frighteningly Orwellian, but there may be some potential
advantages to be gained from our growing understanding of the human
brain's tremendous plasticity.

What if we could create an environment that would allow the brain to
develop in a way that was seen to be of universal benefit?


I'm not convinced that scientists will ever find a way of
manipulating the brain to make us all much cleverer (it would
probably be cheaper and far more effective to manipulate the
education system).

And nor do I believe that we can somehow be made much happier - not,
at least, without somehow anaesthetising ourselves against the
sadness and misery that is part and parcel of the human condition.


When someone I love dies, I still want to be able to cry.


But I do, paradoxically, see potential in one particular direction.

I think it possible that we might one day be able to harness outside
stimuli in such a way that creativity - surely the ultimate
expression of individuality - is actually boosted rather than
diminished.


I am optimistic and excited by what future research will reveal into
the workings of the human brain, and the extraordinary process by
which it is translated into a uniquely individual mind.


But I'm also concerned that we seem to be so oblivious to the dangers
that are already upon us.


Well, that debate must start now. Identity, the very essence of what
it is to be human, is open to change - both good and bad. Our
children, and certainly our grandchildren, will not thank us if we
put off discussion much longer.

• Adapted from ID: The Quest For Identity In The 21st Century by
Susan Greenfield, to be published by Sceptre on May 15 at £16.99. To
order a copy for £15.30 (p&p free), call 0845 606 4206.

pseudo science <http://io9.com/tag/pseudo-science/>                  The
Pseudo-Sciences You're Most Likely to See in the Next 50 Years
<http://io9.com/383293/the-pseudo+sciences-youre-most-likely-to-see-in-t\
he-next-50-years>
   For every scientific breakthrough, you can expect a new branch
pseudo-science that will mirror genuine science in some distorted way.
In the nineteeth century, the young branch of engineering that spawned
electrical current also spawned quack "electrotherapies
<http://chss.montclair.edu/%7Epererat/mquack.htm> " that promised to
heal you with the amazing powers of electricity. And phrenology (reading
your personality through bumps on your head) became popular just as
neuroscience and psychiatry were taking their first baby steps. What new
psuedo-sciences can you expect in the twenty-first century? We've got
some ideas.

Electro-Encephalogram (EEG) "Mind Reading"
As EEG devices flood the consumer market, quacks will write software
that promises to "read your mind" based on the electrical signals the
EEG can pick up through your skull as you think. Some of this
pseudo-science will be based in today's most speculative real science,
such as the work on happiness
<http://io9.com/382700/you-would-be-happier-if-you-watched-football-and-\
didnt-have-sex>  which suggests lots of electricity in your right
frontal cortex means you are joyful. Expect programs that will promise
to help you find out what your spouse is "really thinking," and ones
that promise to diagnose whether you are having too many negative
thoughts.

Network Divining
Having trouble with your network connections? Does your cell phone
signal drop out at random in certain parts of your house? The best way
to solve your problem, according to quack science, will be with a
special "network divining rod," an LED device that will start blinking
if it finds a "break" in your network signals. Unhappy
Google-AOL-BT-NewsCorp customers can use it to locate where exactly the
problems are in the global phone-computer-media network, and then buy
another device, full of network enhancing crystals, to repair the break.
Expect the usual promises: "Guaranteed to work! We've got testimonials
from many happy customers!"

Green Exhaust Filters
With global warming having melted away the ice that used to cover those
massive oil fields in the arctic, we're more dependent on oil than ever.
But governments are still insisting that carbon emissions must go down,
and your carbon footprint is being measured carefully. The more
emissions, the higher your carbon tax. That's where the hucksters
selling "green exhaust filters" come in. These filters, which they will
claim are made with "patent-pending nanotechnology," fit right into your
exhaust pipes or chimney-top to scrub up to 70 percent of the carbon out
of your emissions. That's a huge tax savings! You can buy now, and pay
in seven easy monthly installments. What you save on your carbon taxes
will make this investment the smartest ever. Until you find out that
it's just a fiberglass filter with some carbon nanotubes sprinkled in.

EMF Focusers
Every mobile device emits a small amount of microwave radiation. While
we used to believe that was dangerous, it turned out that in fact it was
neutral <http://www.who.int/features/qa/30/en/> . Based on that idea,
future quacks will claim that there is actually a benefit to mobile
phone radiation. After all, when people put their cell phones next to
the heads, it turns out they have more to say and their vocabularies get
bigger. So these quacks will start selling mobile apps that promise to
"focus" cell phone radiation to certain regions of your brain that you
want to develop more quickly. Want to learn another language really
quickly? Get the language stimulation package. Want to inspire yourself
to exercise more? Get the goal-attainment package. You don't even have
to hold the mobile in a different position! The software does it all for
you.

Top image via Psi-Tronics
<http://www.psi-tronics.com/Crystal%20Divining%20Oracle/CrystalDiviningO\
racle.htm> .



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The Transhuman Terminator
<http://forgetomori.com/2008/science/the-transhuman-terminator/>
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers
knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom“, as He used to say
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov> . And truly, Mindhacks
published a disturbing note
<http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/04/neuroweapons_war_cr.html> ,
involving so many profound and complex questions, and the saddest thing
is that it seems society will not only be incapable to understand much
less correctly judge its implications until long after they are in full
effect.

By now you must probably be aware of decades-old research on brain
activity and free-will
<http://forgetomori.com/2007/skepticism/mind-under-matter/> , pointing
that our decision-making process is certainly different from the concept
of an immaterial puff-puff white cloud making the choices and somehow
transmitting those to a mostly useless gray matter inside our heads. In
fact, unconscious processes on that brain anticipate the conscious
perception of a decision, suggesting that the decision emerges from
activities on that gray matter about which that imaginary puff-puff
cloud called consciousness never becomes aware of.

Such cerebral activity was originally measured in EEG scans, being
confirmed as years passed by and having been recently confirmed even in
fMRI scans
<http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision> .
This more recent study suggests that unconscious cerebral activity may
anticipate a conscious choice on up to seven seconds
<http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2008/04/unconscious_brain_acti\
vity_shapes_our_decisions.php>  . That may seem bizarre, but only if you
are stuck into that puff-puff cloud concept.

If you rather realize that it’s only natural that our decisions
come from many processes in our minds combining memory, reasoning,
emotion and even some randomness, otherwise called creativity or
“free will�, then those scientific findings are no big
surprise.

Now, remember DARPA, which created among other things this sacred
Internet. It has funded for years many projects trying to create better
man-machine interfaces
<http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/05/binoculars> ,
and those include brain activity scanners, which may eventually allow
one to pilot an airplane just by sheer “mind power�, for
instance. Remotely. Combine that with the abolition of the puff-puff
cloud concept, and you may be very scared.

The external control of an object may be accomplished in part or as a
whole by reading unconscious brain activity. They may not even be
“unconscious thoughts�, as they could be distant from what
we would consider a “full thought�. Those unconscious
cerebral functions may anticipate decisions that may never have been
actually “made� consciously. And that, effectively, would
not be felt afterwards as beings made by oneself, as the ideomotor
effect commonly demonstrates
<http://forgetomori.com/2007/skepticism/all-we-zombies/> .

Which finally leads us to mention lawyer Stephen White article on the
Cornell International Law Journal pondering on just how war crimes and
responsibility may be affected by such novelties: ‘Brave New
World: Neurowarfare and the Limits of International Humanitarian Law
<http://organizations.lawschool.cornell.edu/ilj/issues/41.1/CIN109.pdf>
‘ (PDF).

Could a soldier be prosecuted by the consequences of his unconscious
cerebral activity, of which he by definition has no control of? Who
would be responsible for an act? White suggests that the responsibility
should be better spread over those involved in the development and
application of the technology, and in all concludes that law must be
discussed and revised for this new 21st century
“neurowarfare�.

Which only emphasizes that man-machine integration on a full unconscious
level may fundamentally change our perception and perhaps even nature.
Transhumanism <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism>  may seem
like a silly gadgety “philosophy�, but a transhuman will
not be just an Iron Man <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_man>  with
increased physical powers. A transhuman will not even be someone with
the entire Internet embedded on his brain. Being able to access all the
information in the world with your conscious mind is one thing.

Having information and actions scanned and executed from your
unconscious mind, and going even further, having information injected
unconsciously in our brain to affect your consciousness would be
something completely different. Something transhuman
<http://posthumanblues.blogspot.com/> . Terrifyingly transhuman.

And this not only will be, but it’s being funded by DARPA right
now. The first true transhuman may be, ironically, a soldier under
command. “So say we all�.






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Neuroweapons, war crimes and the preconscious brain:
A new generation of military technology interfaces directly with the
brain to target and trigger weapons before our conscious mind is fully
engaged.

In a new article
<http://organizations.lawschool.cornell.edu/ilj/issues/41.1/CIN109.pdf>
in the Cornell International Law Journal, lawyer Stephen White asks
whether the concept of a 'war crime' becomes irrelevant if the
unconscious mind is pulling the trigger.

In most jurisdictions, the legal system makes a crucial distinction
between two elements of a crime: the intent (mens rea
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea> ) and the action (actus rea
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus> ).

Causing something dreadful to happen without any intent or knowledge is
considered an accident and not a crime. Hence, a successful prosecution
demands that the accused is shown to have intended to violate the law in
some way.

This concept is based on the theory that the conscious mind forms an
intention, and an actions follows. Unfortunately, we now know that this
idea is outdated.

In the 1980s, pioneering experiments by Benjamin Libet demonstrated that
activity in the brain's action areas can be reliably detected
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bereitschaftspotential>  up to 200ms
before we experience the conscious decision to act. In other words,
consciousness seems to lag behind action.

Although with only limited reliability (just 60%), a recent fMRI study
<http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2008/04/unconscious_brain_acti\
vity_shapes_our_decisions.php>  found that areas in the frontal lobes
were starting to become more active up to seven seconds before the
conscious intention to act.

While these sorts of study raise interesting questions about free will,
their effect on the courts has been minimal, because it is assumed that,
at least for healthy individuals, we have as much control over stopping
our own actions as starting them.

The US government's defence research agency, DARPA
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA> , is currently developing new
military technologies, dubbed 'neuroweapons', that may throw these
assumptions into disarray.

The webpage
<http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrusts/bio/restbio_tech/hand/index.htm>  of
DARPA's Human Assisted Neural Devices Program only mentions the use of
brain-machine interfaces in terms of helping injured veterans, but p11
of the US Dept of Defense budget justification [pdf
<http://www.dtic.mil/descriptivesum/Y2006/DARPA/0601101E.pdf> ]
explicitly states that "This program will develop the scientific
foundation for novel concepts that will improve warfighter performance
on the battlefield as well as technologies for enhancing the quality of
life of paralyzed veterans".

In other words, the same technology
<http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/brain/index.html>  that allows
humans to control computer cursors, robot arms or wheelchairs by thought
alone, could be used to target and trigger weapons.

Even if only part of the process, such as selecting possible targets, is
delegated to technology that reads the unconscious orienting response
from the brain, that still means that part of the thought process has
automatically become part of the action.

Notably, international law outlaws indiscriminate weapons and
aggression, but if the unconscious thought becomes the weapon, how can
we possibly prosecute a war crime?

White reviews the current state of the technology from the unclassified
evidence and carefully examines the ethical and legal issues, ultimately
arguing that we need a new legal framework for 21st century
'neurowarfare'.

The first preconsious war may soon be upon us.


pdf
<http://organizations.lawschool.cornell.edu/ilj/issues/41.1/CIN109.pdf>
of 'Brave New World: Neurowarfare and the Limits of International
Humanitarian Law'.

â€"Vaughan <http://tinyurl.com/6udmu> .



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision
<http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision>
Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them By Brandon
Keim
You may think you decided to read this story -- but in fact, your brain
made the decision long before you knew about it.

In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using
brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the
test subjects were even aware of making them.

The decision studied -- whether to hit a button with one's left or right
hand -- may not be representative of complicated choices that are more
integrally tied to our sense of self-direction. Regardless, the findings
raise profound questions about the nature of self and autonomy: How free
is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion?

"Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time
consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done," said
study co-author John-Dylan Haynes
<http://www.cns.mpg.de/L/homepage_MA_html?user=haynes> , a Max Planck
Institute neuroscientist.

Haynes updated a classic experiment by the late Benjamin Libet
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet> , who showed that a brain
region involved in coordinating motor activity fired a fraction of a
second before test subjects chose to push a button. Later studies
supported Libet's theory that subconscious activity preceded and
determined conscious choice -- but none found such a vast gap between a
decision and the experience of making it as Haynes' study has.

In the seven seconds before Haynes' test subjects chose to push a
button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region
associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to
the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration. Haynes' team
monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine.

Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test
subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand -- a
choice that, to them, felt like the outcome of conscious deliberation.
For those accustomed to thinking of themselves as having free will, the
implications are far more unsettling than learning about the
physiological basis of other brain functions.

Caveats remain, holding open the door for free will. For instance, the
experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of other, more
complicated decisions.

"Real-life decisions -- am I going to buy this house or that one, take
this job or that -- aren't decisions that we can implement very well in
our brain scanners," said Haynes.

Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will
enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable
subconscious decision.

"We can't rule out that there's a free will that kicks in at this late
point," said Haynes, who intends to study this phenomenon next. "But I
don't think it's plausible."

That implausibility doesn't disturb Haynes.

"It's not like you're a machine. Your brain activity is the
physiological substance in which your personality and wishes and desires
operate," he said.

The unease people feel at the potential unreality of free will, said
National Institutes of Health neuroscientist Mark Hallett
<http://neuroscience.nih.gov/Lab.asp?Org_ID=72> , originates in a
misconception of self as separate from the brain.

"That's the same notion as the mind being separate from the body -- and
I don't think anyone really believes that," said Hallett. "A different
way of thinking about it is that your consciousness is only aware of
some of the things your brain is doing."

Hallett doubts that free will exists as a separate, independent force.

"If it is, we haven't put our finger on it," he said. "But we're happy
to keep looking."

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision
<http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Mirror Mind
Kal Cobalt
http://www.realitysandwich.com/mirror_mind

Phantom limb pain consistently baffles the medical community.
Theories abound as to its cause, but they are only conjecture, and no
consistently effective treatment exists -- until now. Clinical trials
of "mirror therapy" at Walter Reed Army Medical Center have yielded
surprising and welcome results.

Mirror therapy consists of positioning a mirror in such a way that
the intact limb is reflected in the position of the amputated limb.
Patients flex and stretch the intact limb while looking in the
mirror, creating an illusion for the mind that both limbs are
present.

After one month of mirror therapy, all patients in the clinical trial
reported "significantly less" phantom pain. Half the patients
performing the same routine with the mirror covered experienced an
increase in pain, and those who only visualized the treatment
experienced a 67% rate of decreased pain. When these patients were
switched to mirror therapy, 90% experienced decreased pain.

A similar study on mirror massage seems to corroborate the results of
this study.

The prevailing theory on phantom pain's origin is that the brain's
ability to tell where a limb is located, which does not alter after
amputation, is in conflict with the visual input of the missing limb.
This conflict causes neurons to misfire, which sometimes results in a
perception of pain. By bringing the visual input in alignment with
the body's proprioception in mirror therapy, the brain is tricked
into thinking both limbs remain present. Misfiring lessens, and pain
decreases.

http://www.realitysandwich.com/mirror_mind

Now here's something that sounds like a truly unique local
event…

For anyone interested in all things parapsychological, check out former
military psychic remote viewer Paul Smith's upcoming "Dowsing
For Your Dead" presentation for the Austin Genealogical Society
<http://www.austintxgensoc.org/> .

Paul says, "It is an introduction and overview of how dowsing could
be used to help search for ancestors' final resting places."

Paul is the author of Reading the Enemies Mind and wrote the Army's
manual for training people in the art of Remote Viewing.

Here are the details:

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Program: Dowsing For Your Dead

Presented by: Paul H. Smith

Where: Highland Park Baptist Church

5208 Balcones Drive, Austin, Texas

When: 6:30 P.M. Doors Open; 7:00 P.M. Meeting & Program Begin



Paul H. Smith - www.rviewer.com <http://www.rviewer.com/>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

What's on your mind? Neuroscientists may one day find out
Published: Wednesday March 5, 2008
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/What_s_on_your_mind_Neuroscientists_03052
008.html

Venturing into the preserve of science fiction and stage magicians,
scientists in the United States on Wednesday said they had made
extraordinary progress towards reading the brain.

The researchers said they had been able to decode signals in a key
part of the brain to identify images seen by a volunteer, according
to their study, published by the British journal Nature.

The tool used by the University of California at Berkeley
neuroscientists is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a
non-invasive scanner that detects minute flows of blood within the
brain, thus highlighting which cerebral areas are triggered by light,
sound and touch.

Their zone of interest was the visual cortex -- a frontal part of the
brain that reconstitutes images sent by the retina.

Using two of their number as volunteers, the team built a
computational model based on telltale blood-flow patterns in three
key areas of the visual cortex.

The signatures were derived from 1,750 images of objects, such as
horses, trees, buildings and flowers, that were flashed up in front
of the subjects.

Using this model, the programme then scanned a new set of 120 brand
new pictures to predict what kind of fMRI patterns these would make
in the visual cortex.

After that, the volunteers themselves looked at the 120 new pictures
while being scanned. The computer then matched the measured brain
activity against the predicted brain activity, and picked an image
that it believed was the closest match.

They notched up a 92-percent success rate with one volunteer, and
accuracy was 72 percent in the other. The probability of this
happening on the basis of chance -- i.e. the computer picking the
right image out of the 120 -- is only 0.8 percent.

In an email to AFP, lead author Jack Gallant likened the task to that
of a magician who asks a member of the audience to pick a card from a
pack, and then figures out which one it was.

"Imagine that we begin with a large set of photographs chosen at
random," Gallant said.

"You secretly select just one of these and look at it while we
measure your brain activity. Given the set of possible photographs
and the measurements of your brain activity, the decoder attempts to
identify which specific photograph you saw."

The ambitious experiment was taken a stage further, expanding the set
of novel images from 120 to up to 1,000. The first volunteer took
this test, and accuracy declined, but only slightly, from 92 percent
to 82 percent.

"Our estimates suggest that even with a set of one billion images --
roughly the number of images indexed by Google on the Internet -- the
decoder would correctly identify the image about 20 percent of the
time," said Gallant.

The researchers say the device cannot "read minds," the common term
for unscrambling thoughts. It cannot even reconstruct an image, only
identify an image that was taken from a known set, they point out.

All the same, the potential is enormous, they believe.

Doctors could use the technique to diagnose brain areas damaged by a
stroke or dementia, determine the outcome of drug treatment or stem-
cell therapy and fling open a door into the strange world of dreams.

And, according to one futuristic scenario, paraplegic patients, by
thinking of a series of images whose fMRI patterns are recognised by
computer, may one day be able to operate machines by remote control.

Even so, brain-reading is hedged with potential controversy.

Within 30 or 50 years, advances could raise fears about breach of
privacy and authoritarian abuse of the kind that dog biotechnology
today, the authors say.

"No-one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading process
involuntarily, covertly, or without complete informed consent," they
say.

Although the two subjects were also investigators, there was no risk
that the outcome of the test was skewed by suggestion or subliminal
cues, co-researcher Kendrick Kay told AFP.

"Decoding performance was evaluated on a dataset that is completely
independent of the one used to estimate the computational model,"
said Kay.

"There is no plausible way that a subject could somehow make the
evaluation dataset easier to decode by our computational algorithms."

Charlie Brooker's screen burn
by Charlie Brooker / Saturday January 19, 2008
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/tvradio/story/0,,2242225,00.html

Hey sexy. I'm stimulating you right now. Can you feel it?
No, really: when you're reading, your brain's constantly stimulated.
And it'll continue to be stimulated when you put this down and do
something else. Even if all you do is gawp listlessly at a tea towel,
the information keeps flowing in, and your brain keeps chewing it up.

And that's a good thing, because left to its own devices, it gets
fidgety. Switch the lights off, deprive it of stimuli, and after a
while it starts daydreaming. And if the lights never come back on,
the daydreams become reality.

Your brain transforms into the ultimate unreliable narrator and soon
you'll believe all manner of disjointed oddness. One minute you hear
the theme from Hollyoaks playing from nowhere, then you're INSIDE the
theme from Hollyoaks, which by now is full of colours, and they're
grinning at you, and then you realise you're one of them: you're a
grinning blob of colour that lives inside the theme from Hollyoaks.
Or maybe you're a mile-wide pool of pork-flavoured honey with a bus
and a hook for a face. Either way, you've gone bonkers.

That's the basis for this week's creepy Horizon (Tuesday, 9pm, BBC2)
special on sensory deprivation, in which six volunteers get slammed
up in the dark for 48 hours. How creepy? Way creepy. The experiment
takes place in a disused nuclear bunker; one of the men running it
can't be shown on camera "for security reasons", and we're told
research like this was abandoned 40 years ago when the scientists
conducting it decided it was "too cruel". It's the Fact Ents
equivalent of a horror movie.

Three of the guinea pigs are simply kept in dark rooms, while the
rest are made to wear eye masks that reduce the world to a grey blur,
headphones that pump a continual white noise drone into their ears,
and gigantic foam mittens so they can't even scratch their bums for
entertainment.

Meanwhile, a psychotherapist with an unnerving omnipresent grin
monitors their progress using night vision cameras, taking notes each
time they pace up and down, talk to themselves, or hallucinate. One
sits on the end of the bed watching snakes and cars and the
occasional human visitor; another (the comedian Adam Bloom, oddly
enough) strolls round a non-existent pile of empty oyster shells.

These laugh-a-minute sequences are interspersed with talking-head
testimony from former victims of sensory deprivation: a guy called
Parris who was locked in solitary for years for a crime he didn't
commit, and former hostage Brian Keenan. Parris invented a fantasy
world, then couldn't escape it; Brian was tormented by imaginary
music that wouldn't stop playing unless he bashed his head against
the wall.

It took them months to go that mad, mind. I reckon I'd get there
quicker. Lock me in there and within five minutes I'd be running
screaming round the room, pursued by a giant version of Joe
Pasquale's face on wheels.

Fortunately, the experiment isn't simply being performed for
entertainment. The show has a point to make.

After their ordeal, the volunteers are tested to see how susceptible
to suggestion they've become - and surprise, surprise, they're highly
malleable. The point being, any confession made by someone who's
spent the past few days swatting invisible monsters is likely to be
worthless. Nonetheless, sensory deprivation techniques are being used
around the world right now, at Guantanamo for example. It may not
technically be classed as torture, but the programme leaves you in no
doubt whatsoever that anyone sanctioning such treatment on a fellow
human being is a hateful pig of the lowest order.

Rumsfeld's retired. I wonder if he sleeps at night, and if not - and
I pray not - what self-made horrors he visualises as he lies in the
dark? Here's hoping they chase him through this night and the next.
From now until never o'clock.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/tvradio/story/0,,2242225,00.html

Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software
Alexi Mostrous and David Brown
From The Times - January 16, 2008
<http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3193
480.ece>

Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of
remotely monitoring a worker's productivity, physical wellbeing and
competence.

The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a
computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless
sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow
managers to monitor employees' performance by measuring their heart
rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood
pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on
the basis of a computer's assessment of their physiological state.

Technology allowing constant monitoring of workers was previously
limited to pilots, firefighters and Nasa astronauts. This is believed
to be the first time a company has proposed developing such software
for mainstream workplaces.

Microsoft submitted a patent application in the US for a "unique
monitoring system" that could link workers to their computers.
Wireless sensors could read "heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG,
brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial
movements, facial expressions and blood pressure", the application
states.

The system could also "automatically detect frustration or stress in
the user" and "offer and provide assistance accordingly". Physical
changes to an employee would be matched to an individual
psychological profile based on a worker's weight, age and health. If
the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions
suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that he
needed help.

The Information Commissioner, civil liberties groups and privacy
lawyers strongly criticised the potential of the system for "taking
the idea of monitoring people at work to a new level". Hugh
Tomlinson, QC, an expert on data protection law at Matrix Chambers,
told The Times: "This system involves intrusion into every single
aspect of the lives of the employees. It raises very serious privacy
issues."

Peter Skyte, a national officer for the union Unite, said: "This
system takes the idea of monitoring people at work to a new level
with a new level of invasiveness but in a very old-fashioned way
because it monitors what is going in rather than the results." The
Information Commissioner's Office said: "Imposing this level of
intrusion on employees could only be justified in exceptional
circumstances."

The US Patent Office confirmed last night that the application was
published last month, 18 months after being filed. Patent lawyers
said that it could be granted within a year.

Microsoft last night refused to comment on the application, but
said: "We have over 7,000 patents worldwide and we are proud of the
quality of these patents and the innovations they represent. As a
general practice, we do not typically comment on pending patent
applications because claims made in the application may be modified
through the approval process."

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article31934
80.ece

Military Mindfields -
By Daniel Pinchbeck
January 2008

Recently, while at a Phoenix, Arizona conference on UFOs, crop
circles, alternative archaeology and other such fringe matters, I
encountered, to my surprise, a true American hero. A straightforward
and unassuming man whose father was a well-respected Alaskan
congressman, Dr. Nick Begich has been waging a long and often lonely
campaign to raise the public’s awareness of the extraordinary perils
and potentials of new technologies that can act upon the brain and
influence our cognitive and somatic capacities, often without us
knowing about them. At first, many of the military initiatives and
scientific research projects described by Dr. Begich sound like
science fiction â€" the stuff of Philip K. Dick’s most paranoid visions
â€" but they are quite real, and in many cases already available. A huge
trove of documents, articles and public testimonies assembled by
Begich’s team can be found at the website of The Lay Institute.

Confronted with this information, I was shocked at first, and wondered
why it is almost never discussed in the media or public sphere. My
next reaction was to want to run away from thinking about it ever
again. Unfortunately, as Begich makes clear, the only protection we
have against misuse of these discoveries is an increase in public
knowledge and debate about them. The legislative system we inherited
from the 18th Century was not set up to deal with the current
scenario, where rapid-fire developments in technology and science have
immediate political meaning and potentially great social consequences.
It is up to civil society â€" and us as individuals â€" to step into this
breach. The consequences of not doing so may be severe.

Dr. Begich began his work studying the HAARP (High-frequency Active
Auroral Research Program) Project, an array of radio frequency
transmitters in Alaska designed to affect the ionosphere, an
atmospheric sheath that protects the Earth from solar rays. Beyond
potentially influencing missile guidance systems and changing weather
patterns, HAARP can also be used, potentially, to affect the
brainwaves of civilians over a large geographical area, causing
inexplicable agitation or aggression by beaming ELF (extremely low
frequency) waves or high-frequency pulses beyond the threshold of our
auditory capacity. Dr. Begich objects to HAARP because of this
capacity, and because it changes the delicate ionosphere. Although we
don’t know much about the ionosphere, we are treating it as an arena
in which to “plug and play� our experimental technologies.

In the last decades, a huge amount has been learned about the
electromagnetic environment of the human brain and body. This
knowledge, as Dr. Begich discusses in his latest book, Controlling the
Human Mind: The Technologies of Political Control or Tools for Peak
Performance (Earthpulse Press, 2006), could lead to tremendous
advances in healing and in methods of self-development, or to weapons
that “pierce the very integrity of the human being.� Potentially,
memory, emotion and cognitive function can be transformed by these
technologies.

Dr. Begich isolates a spooky trend in military thought that sees the
human being reduced to the status of a “data-processing system� that
can be affected or incapacitated depending on the energy inputs it
receives. As one article, “The Mind Has No Firewall,� from Parameters,
the U.S. Army War College Journal, put it, “The body is capable not
only of being deceived, manipulated, or misinformed but also shut down
or destroyed â€" just as any other data-processing system.â€�
Electromagnetic or acoustic energy waves can alter the individual’s
“hardware system� and manipulate the “data� stored in their psyche.
According to Dr. Begich, technologies already exist that can “shift a
person’s emotions using remote electromagnetic tools,� and “transfer
sound in a way where only the targeted person� hears a voice in their
head.

Interestingly, developments in these areas could lead to breakthroughs
in healing, to tools that greatly increase cognitive function and even
amplify “abilities of individuals for anomalous phenomenaâ€� â€" psychic
capacities â€" according to a military analyst. Biofeedback techniques
have been proven to accelerate skills-based learning and to
successfully treat children with ADD. Use of “binaural beats� can
harmonize relationships between the two hemispheres of the brain,
while tools focusing on the energy fields of the body can augment
acupuncture and other treatment modalities.

Begich calls for an end to government secrecy about study of mind and
behavior control techniques. He notes that the area of mind
modification technologies is “changing so rapidly that the science is
being formed faster than the applications can be fully recognized.�
Considering the enormous potential of these tools to help liberate the
mind or control it at a level beyond anything previously known, the
U.S. public should demand to have a rigorous “precautionary principle�
put in place.

Philip K. Dick is great fun to read, but few of us would want to live
in one of his maniacal, paranoid dystopias. Unfortunately, the
powerful knowledge we are now accessing about the intricate workings
of our energetic systems could lead in that direction, if we don’t
take action.

Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A
Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway
Books, 2002) and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin,
2006). His features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine,
Rolling Stone, Esquire, Wired and many other publications.

http://wholelifetimes.com/2008/01/pinchbeck0801.html

Scientists create machine that knows what you are thinking
By FIONA MACRAE

Last updated at 14:52pm on 3rd January 2008

Scientists have developed a machine which is capable of reading our
mind and revealing our most private thoughts.

American researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,
found that, with the aid of a sophisticated scanner and computer
programme, they were able to determine how the brain lights up when
thinking about different subjects.

Using an advanced form of MRI scanner, they analysed how the brain
reacted to ten drawings of tools and buildings.

They then used a computer programme to work out whether a person was
thinking about a tool or a building.

The researchers' analysis was found to be 97 per cent accurate but
they went on to show that they could distinguish between two similar
objects, such as two different tools, almost as successfully.

This is the first time the technique has been finetuned to
distinguish between similar objects.

The brain scans also showed many different brain regions are involved
in processing information even in the case of something as simple as
a line drawing of a hammer.

Thinking about how a hammer is used activated the areas involved in
movement, while thinking about the shape of a hammer and what it is
used for lit up other regions.

Despite being limited to picking up the thoughts behind just ten
pictures, the researchers are confident that they will soon be able
to identify entire sentences.

One of the team, Dr Svetlana Shinkareva, said: "We hope to progress
to identifying the thoughts associated not just with pictures but
also with words and eventually sentences."

The technique could also have medical applications by, for example,
providing valuable insights into conditions such as autism.

Study leader Professor Marcel Just said: "People with autism perceive
others in a distinctive way that has been difficult to characterise.

"This approach offers a way to discover that characterisation."

The study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, also showed that
different people think about the same thing in the same way.

"This part of the study establishes, as never before, that there is a
commonality in how different people's brains represent the same
subject," the study said.

"There has always been a philosophical conundrum as to whether one
person's perception of the colour blue is the same as another
person's.

"Now we see that there is a great deal of commonality across
different people's brain activity corresponding to familiar tools and
dwellings."

The device's possibilities can, however, be extended and the team
envisage a time when it will be used to conduct infallible lie
detector tests, while the accurate interpretation of a person's
intentions could allow police to arrest criminals before they break
the law, as seen in the film Minority Report.

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.
html?in_article_id=505756&in_page_id=1965>

Page 1 of a 7 page article in Seed:

The Listener

As Oliver Sacks observes the mind through music, his belief in a
science of empathy takes on new dimension.

by Jonah Lehrer • Posted October 29, 2007 01:29 PM

Photograph by Doron Gild

In 1974 Oliver Sacks was climbing a mountain in Norway by himself. It
was early afternoon, and he had just begun his descent when a slight
misstep sent him careening over a rocky cliff. His left leg was
"twisted grotesquely" beneath his body, his limp knee wracked with
pain. "My knee could not support any weight at all, but just buckled
beneath me," he wrote in A Leg to Stand On. Sacks began to "row"
himself down the mountain, sliding on his back and pushing with his
hands, so that his leg, which he'd splinted with his umbrella, was
"hanging nervelessly" in front of him. After a few hours, Sacks was
exhausted, but he knew that if he stopped he would not survive the
cold night.

What kept Sacks going was music. As he painstakingly descended the
mountain, he began to make a melody out of his movements. "I fell into
a rhythm," Sacks writes, "guided by a sort of marching or rowing song,
sometimes the Volga Boatman's Song, sometimes a monotonous chant of my
own. I found myself perfectly coordinated by this rhythmâ€"or perhaps
subordinated would be a better term: The musical beat was generated
within me, and all my muscles responded obediently...I was musicked
along." Sacks reached the village at the bottom of the mountain just
before nightfall.

A long convalescence followed, as he tried to regain the use of his
injured leg, but the nerves in his limb had been severely damaged.
When Sacks tried to walk, he was forced to consciously calculate his
movements, to think before each step.

Once again, Sacks was saved by the sudden appearance of song. As he
was struggling with physical therapyâ€"and growing increasingly
frustratedâ€"his mind was inexplicably filled with the resonant strings
of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. "In the moment that this inner music
started," Sacks recounts, "the leg came back. With no warning, no
transition whatever, the leg felt alive, and real, and mine." Sacks
would later describe his vivid hallucinations of the Concerto as a
kind of miracle, in which the music "descended like grace," reminding
him of his own "kinetic melody." The song had restored him to himself.

I'm sitting in Oliver Sacks's office in New York City's Greenwich
Village. Bookshelves are cluttered with neurological texts and
periodic-table paraphernalia, so that a rod of tungsten (his favorite
element) sits next to the collected works of William James. The air
conditioner is perpetually set on high, its wheeze so loud that it
drowns out the noises of city and street. This is where Sacks writes,
at a desk facing the window by the air conditioner, on long yellow
sheets fed into a manual typewriter. "I like the clacking of the
keys," he says. "I can't write without that sound."

Sacks's latest book is Musicophilia, an exploration of the musical
mind. As in his previous works, such as An Anthropologist on Mars, or
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks describes a series of
ordinary people transformed by their extraordinary neurological
conditions. He writes, for instance, of Tony Cicoria, who, after being
struck by lightning, suddenly developed an insatiable obsession with
Chopin's piano music. Before the accident, Tony had been a respected
surgeon, with little interest in classical music. But now he insisted
on spending all of his spare time practicing the piano. He even began
composing his own pieces, "giving form to the music continually
running in his head." Sacks also describes the case of Martin, who
developed uncanny musical talents after contracting meningitis as a
child. While the affliction impaired many aspects of Martin's mind, it
left him with a limitless auditory memory. And then there's Mrs. C.,
who was besieged by musical hallucinations after becoming deaf. She
couldn't stop hearing Christmas carols.

Read more here ...

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/10/the_listener.php

----------

...[John] Carey wrote back in public, powerfully praising Hughes's
poetic legacy and touching gently too his somewhat eccentric views on
the links between poetry and the body.

"He could tell, just from reading the plays, that Shakespeare
“obviously� suffered from irregular heart rhythm. Poetry, like the
“magnetism� of a faith healer, could repair damaged cells, whereas
prose could do the opposite.

After being diagnosed with cancer, he came to think that writing his
prose treatise Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being had
destroyed his immune system.

Ever since the 17th century, English society had, he believed, mounted
a systematic campaign of censorship and prohibition to stamp out
truths like these, and to impose its puritanical restrictions on
sexuality, which alone “carries the seeds of humanity and joy�.

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/stothard/2007/10/ted-hughes-and-.html

Paralysed Man's Mind is 'Read' BBC News
In what's described as a pioneering experiment, scientists believe
they are approaching the ability to read the mind of Eric Ramsay, a
conscious but paralyzed man who was injured in a car wreck eight years
ago.

Computer to Read Minds Lamont Wood
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com
Tue Oct 2, 9:05 AM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/computertoreadminds

They're already predicting, mathematically, what you'll want to
watch, what you'll want to wear, and who you'll want to vote for.
Obviously, the next step is for computers to read your mind—and
that's just what they're working toward at Tufts University in Boston.

Your computer won't be picking up details about your plans for the
evening anytime soon. But researchers with the Human Computer
Interaction group at Tufts have, thanks to a $450,000 grant from the
National Science Foundation, come up with a straightforward way for
your computer to tell if you are overworked, under-worked or not
working at all, according to a paper they will present next week at
an Association of Computing Machinery symposium.

That may not sound like penetrating perception, but the researchers
hope that capacity will eventually help them gain real-time insight
into the brain's more subtle emotional states and help provide
pointers about how we can get work done more efficiently.

Futuristic headband

The mind reading actually involves measuring the volume and oxygen
level of the blood around the subject's brain, using technology
called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).

The user wears a sort of futuristic headband that sends light in that
spectrum into the tissues of the head where it is absorbed by active,
blood-filled tissues. The headband then measures how much light was
not absorbed, letting the computer gauge the metabolic demands that
the brain is making.

The results are often compared to an MRI, but can be gathered with
lightweight, non-invasive equipment.

Detecting overwork

Wearing the fNIRS sensor, experimental subjects were asked to count
the number of squares on a rotating onscreen cube and to perform
other tasks. The subjects were then asked to rate the difficulty of
the tasks, and their ratings agreed with the work intensity detected
by the fNIRS system up to 83 percent of the time.

"We don't know how specific we can be about identifying users'
different emotional states," cautioned Sergio Fantini, a biomedical
engineering professor at Tufts. "However, the particular area of the
brain where the blood-flow change occurs should provide indications
of the brain's metabolic changes and by extension workload, which
could be a proxy for emotions like frustration."

New evaluation techniques that monitor user experiences while working
with computers are increasingly necessary, because a user may be
bored one moment and overwhelmed the next, said Robert Jacob, a
computer science professor at Tufts who is also involved in the
research.

"Measuring mental workload, frustration and distraction is typically
limited to qualitatively observing computer users or to administering
surveys after completion of a task, potentially missing valuable
insight into the users' changing experiences," Jacob said.

10 Things You Didn't Know About You Scientists Predict What You'll
Think of Next Quiz: Great Inventions Original Story: Computer to Read
Minds

Visit LiveScience.com for more daily news, views and scientific
inquiry with an original, provocative point of view. LiveScience
reports amazing, real world breakthroughs, made simple and
stimulating for people on the go. Check out our collection of
Science, Animal and Dinosaur Pictures, Science Videos, Hot Topics,
Trivia, Top 10s, Voting, Amazing Images, Reader Favorites, and more.
Get cool gadgets at the new LiveScience Store, sign up for our free
daily email newsletter and check out our RSS feeds today!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/computertoreadminds

Lay Institute's Mind Effects Conference Videos

The Following Videos are available for viewing online at LayInstitute.org

<http://www.layinstitute.org/src/subcategory.asp?catid=11&subcatid=9>

Biological Warfare: Experiments on the American People
Dr. Garth Nicolson

Electromagnetic Interactions with Biological Systems
Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher

Light in Health: Use of Light in the Treatment of Disease
Dr. Anu Makela

Light in Healthcare: Technical Aspects of the Use of Light in
Hospitals and General Healthcare
Dr. Levon Gasparyan

Paradigms Unlimited
Dr. Ben Eastlund

Natural (Largely Unused) Powers of the Mind
Dr. Rosalie Bartell

<http://www.layinstitute.org/src/subcategory.asp?catid=11&subcatid=9>

Boeing's Psychic Lab By Noah Shachtman
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/07/new-correlation.html
<http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/07/new-correlation.html>

Boeing researchers don't just spend their days designing killer drones
<http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/04/62893>  and
networked tanks
<http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/06/ever_time_you_t.html> .  They
also investigate unexplained powers of the mind, sometimes. Especially
if those times are the late '60s.

This study, New Correlation Between a Human Subject and a Quantum
Mechanical Random Number Generator
<http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&iden\
tifier=AD0667953> , conducted in 1967, "tentatively conclude[s]" that
people can basically will particular numbers to appear.

According to the Boeing-ites, there "exists a weak but significant
correlation" between the experiment's "statistical processes" (that
would be the generation of random numbers, "connected to four lamps and
four corresponding pushbuttons") and "the experimenter who initiates the
processes" ("the human subjects, asked to press the buttons... with the
objective in mind of obtaining a high number of coincidences").

There's no mention of follow-up studies.  But this Boeing experiment is
one of a number of fringe and alternative science projects we found
after a quick dig through the online archives of the Defense Technical
Information Center <http://stinet.dtic.mil/> .  You'll get a kick out of
the others.  So keep reading...

Group Norms and Dissonance Reduction in Belief, Behavior, and Judgment
<http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&iden\
tifier=AD0684816> : "Forty-four female subjects met in groups of four,
each in a separate booth, and were asked to report whether or not they
received 'ESP images' which were presumably projected by a 'sender' in
another room," during this 1960 military-backed study at UCLA.  "Half
the Ss, in a control condition, were unaware of the responses of others.
For the others, in the experimental condition, a device... gave each
subject the impression that the other three Ss had received images on 23
of 30 trials. It was found that, particularly, in the control condition,
reported reception of ESP images was a function of one's initial belief
in ESP."

An Analysis of the Relationship Among Meditation, Personality Type and
Control of Brain Wave Production
<http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&iden\
tifier=AD0776313> : "In recent years scientists in every nation have
come to realize that voluntary control of behavior is of primary
importance if one hopes to establish an ordered society or even to
maintain a society. Meditation has been known and practiced by Asian
people, especially Indians, for many hundreds of years," notes this 1973
paper from the Naval Postgraduate School.  "With the aid of the
biofeedback technique, it is believed that the study of altered states
of consciousness, creativity, parapsychology, personality type,
psychosomatic medicine, therapy, and education, etc., could be greatly
enhanced."

Photon Quenching of the Paranormal (Time) Channel
<http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&iden\
tifier=ADA038588>  (and others): Lt. Col. Thomas Bearden started out, in
this 1974 study
<http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&iden\
tifier=ADA005579>  for the Army Medical Intelligence and Information
Agency, "searching for a way to break the deadlock in which physics,
mathematics, and philosophy are all entangled."    By the time 1976
<http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&iden\
tifier=ADA027866>  rolls around, he's advancing:

a fourth law of logic together with the first three Aristotlean laws of
logic form a complete, closed metalogic encompassing both physics and
metaphysics. A cluster of an infinite number of orthogonal 3-dimensional
spatial frames, all containing the same single fourth dimension, or time
axis, provides a framework onto which mind, matter, fields, being, life,
and both physical and metaphysical phenomena can be fitted and precisely
modelled. Thus metaphysics can be precisely modelled by, and related to,
physics. A mind becomes a complete 3-dimensional physical world. From
the model, constructs that model life, death, a biological system, psi,
consciousness, inception, telepathy, psychokinesis, UFO's, God, and the
collective unconscious can be taken. Materialization, dematerialization,
and mind linkage also exist, as does a specific mechanism for tulpas
(materialized thought forms).

He also, apparently, figured out "the Hieronymus device, the mind/body
problem, the nature of mind, the nature of nothing, and the difficulties
in the logical basis of probability."  Your military research dollars,
hard at work.

ALSO:

* Pentagon's Psychic Vision Revisited
<http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/06/dinner-with.html>

* Psychic Commanders, ESP Pigeons in Military Studies
<http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/06/psychokinesis-a.html>

* Cyberpanic crowd pushes "psychic information warfare"
<http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/06/cyberwar_panic_.html>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Brain Research, Nanotech and the Military
http://www.counterpunch.org/thieme07032007.html
<http://www.counterpunch.org/thieme07032007.html>
Mind Wars
By RICHARD THIEME

"What we don't know is so much bigger than we are."

Haitian Proverb

Oh, how I wish that reviewing a book like this were simple and
straightforward! That would mean we live in a world of transparency,
government accountability to citizens, easy access to sources, primary
sources willing to go on the record, and data trails that lead readers
to those same sources so everyone can see for themselves.

But alas, we do not live in such a world.

Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1932594167/counterpunchmaga>  by
Jonathan D. Moreno is a broad but necessarily incomplete overview of
neuroscience, nanotechnology and related areas applied to the arts of
war, with an examination of ethical issues raised by this work, all
considered in a historical context by a scholar who has researched the
field.

The key to decoding the book, however, is on page 4 of the introduction.

"I am no loose cannon," writes Jonathan D. Moreno, Ph. D., the Emilie
Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Professor and Director of the Center for
Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia. "I am deeply entrenched
in the non-threatening, even boring, academic establishment. I've taught
at major research universities, hold an endowed chair at an institution
not known as a hotbed of radicalism " and on the disclaimer goes, a plea
to the reader to recognize that the author is no kook, no "conspiracy
theorist," but a respectable, conventional man.

Moreno sounds those notes again, on p. 107, for example, when he states
that he has considerable "experience with government-on the staffs of
presidential advisory committees, in [giving] congressional testimony,
and so forth."

Those qualifications define the subtext of this work and in many ways
the subtext is the primary content. They also suggest one reason why the
exploration of the frontiers of military research and development and
the penetration of the military-industrial-academic-scientific-media
complex is so difficult these days. Insiders know but can't tell;
outsiders can tell, but don't often know, and when they do know,
ridicule and other forms of disinformation can make what they know seem
like fanciful speculation. So they err on the side of extreme caution.

Jonathan Moreno is qualified, without a doubt, to survey what is in the
public domain about neuro-weapons and diverse applications of numerous
branches of research that blur the distinctions between government,
military, and medical, technological and scientific research, and he is
also qualified to discuss the ethical implications of this research. So
why does he need to insist that he is qualified? Because black budget
(clandestinely funded) science and technology is so large a percentage
of all scientific R&D and so hidden from public view that even to
approach the subject is to enter a force field of distortion and
paranoia. One might as well explore UFOs or time travel-domains of
actual research, in fact, but which must be discussed with a wink or, as
Moreno's disclaimers indicate, the trumpeting of one's credentials,
above all credentials of character-respectability and conventionality-so
that one is not marginalized by the mere fact that one has chosen to
explore the domain.

Inevitably, researchers of exotic technologies experience a condition
called "strangeness," a kind of cognitive dissonance, and have to push
against it to reestablish clear boundaries.

Why has this come about?

Because a national security state has evolved since World War 2 and is
now the water in which we all swim. Moreno describes the history of that
evolution and shows that a great deal of research, including research in
the behavioral sciences, has been determined by a perception of military
necessity. Access to the research is determined by the "need to know"
and most readers of this book are "outsiders." Moreno himself is an
insider of sorts, having served as an expert for numerous government
venues, but his credibility depends on continued access and access
depends on behaving rightly. Saying the right things in the right way
defines correct behavior; hence disclaimers that distance him from
fringe thinkers without institutional support or structural authority,
like this reviewer.

Steven H. Miles, M.D., the author of "Oath Betrayed/Torture, Medical
Complicity, and the War on Terror," states that he is often asked if he
fears for his life because he discussed public documents, thirty five
thousand pages of them, which reveal that medical complicity. That he is
even asked such a question, Miles says, "is an epiphenomenon of being a
torturing society. A torturing society is a society that is abraded by
the process of dehumanization. In that process, we essentially create
our own mirrored netherworlds."

A mirrored netherworld is exactly what is signified by Moreno's repeated
insistence on credentials that ought to be obvious. His netherworld is a
force field of distortion that attends any venture through the
looking-glass of security clearances to explore areas that are exotic,
dangerous, and mostly secret. That force field is an epiphenomenon of
the national security state.

Moreno's history of post-WW2 research begins with identifying the
transformation of America into a "garrison state," a nation that views
the world as a dangerous place that requires the United States to
project power everywhere in and increasingly out of the world to be
secure. National Security Council document NSC-68, published in 1950,
defined this strategy which is still pursued today. "It is mandatory
that in building up our strength, we enlarge upon our technical
superiority by an accelerated exploitation of the scientific potential
of the United States and our allies," the document states. Currently,
academic research receives several billion dollars a year, with MIT
receiving half a billion, the largest single share. Much of the research
is dual use, with commercial as well as military applications, but would
not have been funded were it not for the latter.

"Mind Wars" surveys current research that has come to light. I was not
surprised by any of the details of this book, although someone with less
of a fetish for the subject might well be.

Moreno asks what novel ethical questions are raised by the emergence of
new applications for war which will alter human identity by modifying
memory, cognition, and core physical, emotional and spiritual
capabilities. The enhancement of cognitive processes such as memory, for
example, raises questions about why we evolved as we have. We forget
things for good reasons-it is not helpful to be tormented, and our
brains would be overwhelmed if we remembered everything, including
masses of irrelevant data. Near-total recall would pose new problems as
would enhancement of affective processes related to religious
experience-e.g., how many mystics do we need? Evolution of the species
suggests that a few mystics per thousand are plenty. But if genetic,
chemical, and technological enhancements can trigger mystical
experiences, might too many people bliss out in ecstatic contemplation
of the One? Would too many of us become mice pressing buttons connected
to pleasure centers and die happily rather than eat? Would enhancements
of memory and cognition give an unfair advantage to the children of the
rich much as steroids give big-headed baseball players the ability to
hit the long ball?

Moreno was hampered in his research because many scientists "clammed up"
when asked about their work which means that we can only speculate about
many of the projects. Their silence means that while we know we don't
know, we don't know what we don't know. Hence, cognitive dissonance.

That dissonance never left as I read this book. It's what happens when I
read the fiction of Philip K. Dick. Dick no longer reads like
speculative science fiction smacking of paranoia because the landscape
he describes is the world we now inhabit, a moebius-strip world in which
distortions feed back into the perception of everyday life. The world we
encounter in "Mind Wars" is like the world in Dick's "A Scanner Darkly,"
in which a policeman discovers that the subject he pursues is himself.
In "Mind Wars," Moreno is a participant in the world he describes as
well as an objective observer; the edge of the glass curves and returns
a distorted image.

His own emotions, for example, when he communicates the shock of certain
discoveries, transform his feelings into subject matter the reader must
consider. He communicates his surprise when he learned that Ted
Kaczynski, the Unabomber, participated in "a Harvard study aimed at
psychic deconstruction by humiliating undergraduates and thereby causing
them to experience severe stress." (p. 69) Moreno does not
simplistically attribute all of Kaczynski's behaviors to this event, but
he does speculate on the impact of "a psychological experiment that
involved psychological torment and humiliation that could have left deep
scars" over a period of three years.

I had a similar reaction when I learned of a formative episode in the
life of Donald Defreeze, a.k.a. Cinque, leader of the Symbionese
Liberation Army. DeFreeze and other members of the SLA kidnapped Patty
Hearst and subjected her to brainwashing using classical mind control
techniques. It is seldom asked how DeFreeze learned to brainwash so
effectively. Colin A. Ross, M.D. in "Bluebird," a study of the
deliberate creation of multiple personalities, notes that DeFreeze,
while an inmate at Vacaville State Prison, was "a subject in an
experimental behavior modification program run by Colston Westbrook, a
CIA psychological warfare expert and advisor to the Korean CIA."
(Bluebird, p.212). Westbrook returned to the United States from working
undercover in Viet Nam and "entered Vacaville State Prison under cover
of the Black Cultural Association and there designed the seven-headed
cobra logo of the SLA and gave DeFreeze his African name, Cinque."
(Bluebird, p. 212)

The accounts of both Kaczinski and DeFreeze suggest that their crimes
might have been "blowback," unintended consequences of covert
intelligence operations that rebound on perpetrators.

If those accounts were not public, however, and we speculated in that
vein about DeFreeze and Kaczinski, it would be easy to dismiss our
speculation as "conspiracy theories" or sloppy thinking. We know those
two accounts are not the only experiments that might have backfired, but
prudence suggests we not extrapolate from the known data, lest we be
ridiculed. That's what respectability in a world of strangeness
requires. But in light of those accounts, it is not unreasonable to ask,
what other rough beasts have slouched out of covert research to be born?

So there is often a disconnect between the history that we know and
discussions of current research sanitized by willful innocence. This is
crazy-making. I understand why Moreno does not want to be found on the
wrong side of the looking glass. Yet Moreno wrote an excellent history
of how "informed consent" evolved from the horrors of our own history.
There is a parallax view of the stick of history which enters the water
but seems to be discontinuous rather than a straight line. The distance
of a historical account disinfects the moral dimension of events; we may
be shocked when we read of the torturous experiments of Ewen Cameron and
Sidney Gottleib, for example, doctors who participated in MKULTRA, a
series of CIA experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, electric shock, and
sensory deprivation, but because those experiments ended in the
seventies, they read like scripts for a horror movie instead of a daily
newspaper. Moreno's discussion of ethical issues is similarly sanitized
and sane, appropriate to the seminar room on a college campus, with its
warmth, light, and comfortable chairs, but far from the trenches in
which experiments takes place. His calls for accountability sound
eminently reasonable but are theoretical and abstract because the
details we need in order to explore ethical implications in a real
historical context, one with flesh-and-blood men and women feeling real
emotions, are hidden in darkness.

As a result, readers remain outsiders because we do not "need to know."
We learn afterward some of what has taken place, when details filter
into the light of ordinary day, but the ethical imperatives of a
quickened public conscience can not be applied retroactively. The secret
deeds are already done.

The technology of hypersonic sound (HSS) illustrates how the worlds of
scientific researchers and outsiders bifurcate, creating an
epistemological divide when we outsiders try to understand what is
happening on a basic level.

Hypersonic sound is "a column of sound that does not spread out like
conventional sound but stays locked like a sonic laser." (p. 147). If
you enter the column, you hear it, but outside it, you do not. HSS can
be used to target individuals while ensuring that those around them hear
nothing.

It does not take a devious mind to imagine a variety of uses for
hypersonic sound, nor to imagine its misuse, even as a trivial
amusement. Some accounts of HSS describe pedestrians on sunny days
walking into a column of sound in which they hear a waterfall. Seconds
later, the sound is gone. The demonstrator laughed, watching the
non-consenting public try to puzzle out experiences for which they had
no prior frame.

More pernicious uses of the technology suggest themselves. At the siege
of Waco, David Koresh of the Branch Davidians reported hearing voices in
his head. He was crazy, we are told. But without the key pieces to the
puzzle how do we know?

Moreno states that he has spoken for years with people who claim to have
been targeted by this or similar technologies which put voices into
their heads or use them unknowingly to test beam, particle and
electromagnetic weapons. I have spoken to such people, too.

Yes, hearing voices that are not there is a symptom of illness. But
hearing a voice that no one else hears does not mean, now that we know
about HSS, that the voices do not exist.

Enter strangeness once again. Moreno concludes that the claims of these
people are not credible. But Moreno had already reviewed by that point
in the discussion the abuse of medical and psychological testing by
intelligence professionals in the past.

We know about those earlier experiments only because CIA Director
Richard Helm's order in 1973 to destroy all documents related to MKULTRA
were carried out-except for financial documents stored in obscure
places. Had they known those boxes existed, they too would have been
destroyed, but because they were overlooked, researchers could connect
some dots, at least, and describe a maze of funding sources, dummy
companies fronting for intelligence agencies, and significant numbers of
respectable medical establishments funded in whole or in part by the
CIA.

The parallax view.

So here's the dilemma: Secret experiments were carried out by
well-intentioned patriots working under the cover of security who
tortured non-consenting adults, then covered up the events. There was no
transparency or outside accountability for what they did. The same kinds
of people today authorize experiments and weapons testing, and in the
absence of accountability, they too report only to themselves. The light
from inside bends back at the surface and we see only a black hole.

Had Moreno spoken to victims of MKULTRA and related projects in the
fifties or sixties, before those documents were discovered, had he heard
people subjected to electroshock therapy or drugs or isolation who told
him in horrendous detail what had been done to them, don't you think he
would have made the same statement? That the sane conventional
respectable response by a man of the establishment would be that they
were deluded?

So why are such claims today unworthy of investigation?

Because to conduct such investigations in the absence of transparency,
accountability, and meaningful legislative oversight is to subject
oneself to ridicule and career suicide.

/ /An aside about/ /hypersonic sound John Alexander, the author of
"Future War," told me that a major motivation for developing hypersonic
sound was to communicate with covert agents in dangerous places. Someone
about to be taken down can not answer a cell phone call but can attend
to a voice in the head that tells them to "get out now."

Moreno doesn't mention that application-not a serious flaw, but an
indicator that one depends on one's sources for this sort of research
and many of Moreno's sources are unnamed. Moreno has confidence in them,
as I often do in mine, but without an objective way to evaluate what
they say /How do we know?/

That question is left on the table when we finish this book. "Mind Wars"
surveys much of what has become public about military applications of
brain and mind science and reviews the historical context. Ethical
issues are articulated at length. But in the end, what we don't know is
still much larger than what we do know.

The national security state, with millions of classified documents and
billions of dollars in black research, freezes the average citizen out
of the loop. Like enemies, real and imagined, we do not "need to know."
Classification, of course, covers mistakes and malfeasance and protects
political bases in addition to ensuring security. So we ought to feel
uneasy when we finish this book. "Mind Wars" is not an antidote to
"strangeness." We can't blame Dr. Moreno, who wants doors to continue to
open, calls to be returned. But our dissonance persists. We don't know
what we don't know, only that those who do know ask us to trust.

Trust, yes, but verify, as the old Cold Warrior said. If it was good
enough for him, it ought to be good enough for us.

Richard Thieme speaks and writes about the challenges raised by
technology, science, and globalization in the 21st century. He can be
reached at: rthieme@... <mailto:rthieme@...>

Works cited:

Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1932594167/counterpunchmaga>  by
Jonathan D. Moreno, Dana Press (The Dana Foundation: New York and
Washington DC) 2006

Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/140006578X/counterpunchmaga>  by
Steven H. Miles, M. D., Random House: New York. 2006.

Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970452519/counterpunchmaga>  by
Colin A. Ross, M.D., Manitou Communications: Richardson Texas. 2000.

Future War: Non-Lethal Weapons in Twenty-First-Century Warfare
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312267398/counterpunchmaga>  by
John B. Alexander, St. Martin's Griffin: 2000.

*This review (edited) was originally published by the National Catholic
Reporter <http://www.natcath.com/> .



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Is Ritalin a divorce drug for children?
Xinhuanet
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-06/05/content_6200391.htm>
Tuesday June 5, 2007

A Canadian researcher on Monday called for an investigation into why
children from broken marriages are twice as likely to be prescribed
attention-deficit drugs as children whose parents remain together.

University pf Alberta professor Lisa Strohschein reported in the
Canadian Medical Association Journal more than 6 percent of 633 children
from divorced families were prescribed Ritalin, compared with 3.3
percent of children whose parents stayed together.

"It shows clearly that divorce is a risk factor for kids to be
prescribed Ritalin," Strohschein said.

The study of more than 4,700 children started in 1994, while all the
families were intact, Strohschein said. They followed the children's
progress to see what happened to their families and to see what drugs
were prescribed.

Other studies have shown that children of single parents are more likely
to get prescribed drugs such as Ritalin. But is the problem caused by
being born to a never-married mother, or some other factor?

Ritalin, known generically as methylphenidate, is a psychostimulant drug
most commonly prescribed for the treatment of attention-deficit
hyperactivity disorder in children.

There is a big debate in much of the developed world over whether it may
be over-prescribed — given to children who do not really need it. In
March, a University of California, Berkeley study found that the use of
drugs to treat ADHD has more than tripled worldwide since 1993.

Strohschein said it is possible that some mental health problems
pre-date the divorce, so "it is possible that these kids had these
problems before, but are only being identified afterward."

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-06/05/content_6200391.htm
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-06/05/content_6200391.htm>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

PreCognitive Dissonance with Hosts Craig York and  SMiles Lewis -
Thursdays from 7-8pm CST. Special Two Hour Show - May 17th !!!

www.PreCognitiveDissonance.com

This week on PreCognitive Dissonance, we'll be interviewing writer
and researcher of all things anomalous, Nick Redfern. We'll be
exploring his research into CryptoZoology, Ufology, Conspiracy and
Much More!

Plus, Nick will be launching a regular monthly News Roundup on the
show!!!

Listen with: iTunes / WinAmp / WinMedia Player / RealOne Player /
Live365.

Nick is the author of numerous books and articles including
Bodysnatchers in the Desert, Three Men Seeking Monsters, On The Trail
of the Saucer Spies and many more!

Check out Nick's websites & blogs here:
www.NickRedfern.com
www.UfoMystic.com
www.MonsterUSA.blogspot.com
www.NickCelebritySecrets.blogspot.com
www.MySpace.com/NickRedfern

Tune In 7-8 pm CST on AnomalyRadio.com

SMiles

Greetings INACS eListers,

Check out today's great MIND & BODY THURSDAY videos online at
www.AnomalyTV.com

   PSI Wars - Cartoon Featuring Dean Radin
<http://www.anomalytv.com/site/archives/1900>

   Uri Geller SRI Film
<http://www.anomalytv.com/site/archives/1904>

   Intuitive Investing by Remote Viewing
<http://www.anomalytv.com/site/archives/1903>

Pentagon to Merge Next-Gen Binoculars With Soldiers' Brains
Sharon Weinberger  05.01.07 | 2:00 AM

U.S. Special Forces may soon have a strange and powerful new weapon
in their arsenal: a pair of high-tech binoculars 10 times more
powerful than anything available today, augmented by an alerting
system that literally taps the wearer's prefrontal cortex to warn of
furtive threats detected by the soldier's subconscious.

In a new effort dubbed "Luke's Binoculars" -- after the high-tech
binoculars Luke Skywalker uses in Star Wars -- the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency is setting out to create its own version of
this science-fiction hardware. And while the Pentagon's R&D arm often
focuses on technologies 20 years out, this new effort is dramatically
different -- Darpa says it expects to have prototypes in the hands of
soldiers in three years.

The agency claims no scientific breakthrough is needed on the
project -- formally called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning
System. Instead, Darpa hopes to integrate technologies that have been
simmering in laboratories for years, ranging from flat-field, wide-
angle optics, to the use of advanced electroencephalograms, or EEGs,
to rapidly recognize brainwave signatures.

In March, Darpa held a meeting in Arlington, Virginia, for scientists
and defense contractors who might participate in the project.
According to the presentations from the meeting, the agency wants the
binoculars to have a range of 1,000 to 10,000 meters, compared to the
current generation, which can see out only 300 to 1,000 meters. Darpa
also wants the binoculars to provide a 120-degree field of view and
be able to spot moving vehicles as far as 10 kilometers away.

The most far-reaching component of the binocs has nothing to do with
the optics: it's Darpa's aspirations to integrate EEG electrodes that
monitor the wearer's neural signals, cueing soldiers to recognize
targets faster than the unaided brain could on its own. The idea is
that EEG can spot "neural signatures" for target detection before the
conscious mind becomes aware of a potential threat or target.

Darpa's ambitions are grounded in solid research, says Dennis
McBride, president of the Potomac Institute and an expert in the
field. "This is all about target recognition and pattern
recognition," says McBride, who previously worked for the Navy as an
experimental psychologist and has consulted for Darpa. "It turns out
that humans in particular have evolved over these many millions of
years with a prominent prefrontal cortex."

That prefrontal cortex, he explains, allows the brain to pick up
patterns quickly, but it also exercises a powerful impulse control,
inhibiting false alarms. EEG would essentially allow the binoculars
to bypass this inhibitory reaction and signal the wearer to a
potential threat. In other words, like Spiderman's "spider sense," a
soldier could be alerted to danger that his or her brain had sensed,
but not yet had time to process.

That said, researchers are circumspect about plans to deploy the
technology. One participant in last month's Darpa workshop, John
Murray, a scientist at SRI International, says he thought the
technology was feasible "in a demonstration environment," but
fielding it is another matter.

"In recent years the ability to measure neural signals and to analyze
them quickly has advanced significantly," says Murray, whose own work
focuses on human effectiveness. "Typically in these situations, there
are a whole lot of other issues (involved) in building and deploying,
beyond the research."

It's unclear what the final system will look like. The agency's
presentations show soldiers operating with EEG sensors attached
helmet-style to their heads. Although the electrodes might initially
seem ungainly, McBride says that the EEG technology is becoming
smaller and less obtrusive. "It's easier and easier," he says.

But getting the system down to a target weight of less than five
pounds will be a challenge, and Darpa's presentations make it clear
that size and power are also issues. But even if EEG doesn't make it
into the initial binoculars, researchers involved in other areas say
there are plenty of improvements to existing technology that can be
fielded.

For example, another key aspect of the binoculars will detect threats
using neuromorphic engineering, the science of using hardware and
software to mimic biological systems. Paul Hasler, a Georgia
Institute of Technology professor who specializes in this area and
attended the Darpa workshop, describes, for example, an effort to use
neural computation to "emulate the brain's visual cortex" -- creating
sensors that, like the brain, can scan across a wide field of view
and "figure out what's interesting to look at."

While some engineers are mimicking the brain, others are going after
the eye. Vladimir Brojavic, a former Carnegie Mellon University
professor, specializes in a technology that replicates the function
of the human retina to allow cameras to see in shadows and poor
illumination. He attended last month's workshop, but he said he was
unsure whether his company, Intrigue Technologies, would bid for work
on the project. "I'm hesitant to pick it up, in case it would
distract us from our product development," he says.

According to the Darpa presentations, the first prototypes of Luke's
Binoculars could be in soldiers' hands within three years. That's an
ambitious schedule, and an unusual one for Darpa, note several
workshop attendees, who also say they expect fierce competition over
the project. The list of attendees at the meeting ranged from
university professors to major contractors. Spokespeople for Lockheed
Martin and Raytheon both confirmed interest in the program, but
declined to say whether they would bid on it.

Once fielded, Darpa indicates the measure of success lies with the
military. According to information the agency provided to industry,
initial prototypes would go to Special Forces. If the military asks
to keep the binoculars after the trials, "that's exactly what you
want here," Darpa wrote. "That's success."

Why all the rush? "I have to wonder if they aren't under pressure
from Congress to make a contribution (to the war on terrorism), or if
DOD is really leaning on them to come up with some stuff," suggests
Jonathan Moreno, a professor of ethics at the University of
Pennsylvania, whose recent book, Mind Wars, looks at the Pentagon's
burgeoning interest in neuroscience. Darpa did not respond to press
inquiries about the program.

Despite the fast schedule, McBride, of the Potomac Institute, thinks
the idea is doable. "It's a risky venture, but that's what Darpa
does," he says. "It's absolutely feasible."

www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/05/binoculars

Erasing the Pain of the Past
Scientists Are Developing Drugs That Could Eliminate Traumatic Events
From Our Memories
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN

March 20, 2007 — - "I'd take it in a second," said Sgt. Michael
Walcott, an Iraq War veteran, referring to an experimental drug with
the potential to target and erase traumatic memories.

Walcott, who served in a Balad-based transportation unit that
regularly took mortar fire, now suffers from post-traumatic stress
disorder. Since returning to the United States two years ago, he has
been on antidepressants and in group therapy as he tries to put his
life back together and heal from the psychological scars of
war. "There are moments," he said, "when you just want be alone and
don't want to deal with everyone telling you that you've changed."

There are many others like Walcott. The Army estimates that one in
eight soldiers returning home from Iraq suffers from post-traumatic
stress disorder. Symptoms of the disorder, once known as shell shock,
include flashbacks, nightmares, feelings of detachment, irritability,
trouble concentrating and sleeplessness.

Much about why painful memories come back to haunt soldiers and those
who live through other traumatic experiences remains unknown.
Scientists say that is because little is known about how the brain
stores and recalls memories.

But in their early efforts to understand the way in which short-term
memories become long-term memories, researchers have discovered that
certain drugs can interrupt that process. Those same drugs, they
believe, can also be applied not just in the immediate aftermath of a
traumatic event — like a mortar attack, rape or car accident — but
years later, when an individual is still haunted by memories of event.

The hope is that a post-traumatic stress disorder patient can work
with a psychiatrist and focus a traumatic event, take one of these
drugs and then slowly forget that event. With that hope, however,
comes a series of ethical concerns. What makes up our personalities —
the essence of who we are as individuals — if not the collected
memories of our experiences?

"This is all very preliminary," said Dr. Roger Pitman, a Harvard
Medical School psychiatrist. "We're just getting started. There is
some promising preliminary data but no conclusions."

Much of the research Pitman is currently conducting on human subjects
at Massachusetts General Hospital focuses on altering memories in the
immediate aftermath of a specific type of trauma — automobile
accidents. Subjects who arrive in the hospital's emergency room are
prescribed either the drug propranolol or a placebo.

Propranolol was originally developed to treat high blood pressure,
but its effect on the hormone adrenaline has made it popular among
actors dealing with severe stage fright, and scientists are now using
it in their research on memory.

"There is a period of time after you first learn something before
it's retained," Pitman explained. "This is called consolidation."

Some research has shown that stress hormones, particularly
adrenaline, make that process faster and more intense.

"That's why you remember what you were doing the morning of Sept. 11,
better than August 11," he said.

Some scientists believe that post-traumatic stress disorder is the
result of too much adrenaline entering the brain at the moment the
memory of a traumatic event is being consolidated, or stored, for the
first time.

But "the real hot topic," Pitman said, is not consolidation but
reconsolidation, the process by which an old memory is recalled and
the same "window of opportunity" to alter it with drugs is opened for
a second time.

By getting soldiers, or others who have lived through harrowing
experiences, to remember their traumatic experiences through talking
therapy, the theory goes, the chance to target and erase those
memories presents itself.

Reconsolidation remains a "controversial" theory according to Pitman,
but Joseph LeDoux, a psychologist at New York University's Center for
Neural Science, said his recent experiments with rats adds to
evidence that it's real.

LeDoux is not trying to create a drug to treat humans. For him, the
specific drug isn't important. What is important is understanding the
process by which memories are retained and altered.

"The idea is that memories are vulnerable. They can be improved or
weakened. The main point is that we're trying to understand how this
all works rather than come up with a drug."


An Ethical Firestorm -- 'A Genie in the Bottle'

But the idea of improving or weakening people's memories gives many
medical ethicists pause. The President's Council on Bioethics has
condemned memory-altering research. The National Institutes of
Health, however, has funded some experiments that use propranalol for
post-traumatic stress disorder treatment, and Pitman said he has
received a grant from the Army to begin conducting similar research
with Iraq veterans.

"There are several major concerns" about creating these kinds of
drugs, said Felicia Cohn, a medical ethicist at University of
California at Irvine's School of Medicine. "Is the act of altering
memories even an appropriate medical intervention?" she asked.

Another set of "issues is related to consequences. What are the
effects of altering a particular person's memory but not changing the
context the person is living in. We might erase a young girl's memory
of a rape, but people around her will still know and inadvertently
remind her," Cohn said.

"It becomes a genie in the bottle question. Once a drug is available
for use, it gets used appropriately and inappropriately. People could
start going to physicians to forget they love chocolate. … Is it just
for post-traumatic stress disorder and rape victims? Where do we draw
the line? Who gets to decide what is horrific enough?"

<http://abcnews.go.com/Health/print?id=2964509>

Shades of 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' as neuroscientists
rub out particular memories in rats
<http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070305/full/070305-17.html>

Wipe out a single memory

Drug can clear away one fearful memory while leaving another intact.
Kerri Smith - Published online: 11 March 2007

A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats,
leaving other recollections intact.

The study adds to our understanding of how memories are made and
altered in the brain, and could help to relieve sufferers of post-
traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of the fearful memories that disrupt
their lives. The results are published in Nature Neuroscience1.

The brain secures memories by transferring them from short-term to
long-term storage, through a process called reconsolidation. It has
been shown before that this process can be interrupted with drugs.
But Joseph LeDoux of the Center for Neural Science at New York
University and his colleagues wanted to know how specific this
interference was: could the transfer of one specific memory be
meddled with without affecting others?

"Our concern was: would you do something really massive to their
memory network?" says LeDoux.

Scary music

To find out, they trained rats to fear two different musical tones,
by playing them at the same time as giving the rats an electric
shock. Then, they gave half the rats a drug known to cause limited
amnesia (U0126, which is not approved for use in people), and
reminded all the animals, half of which were still under the
influence of the drug, of one of their fearful memories by replaying
just one of the tones.

When they tested the rats with both tones a day later, untreated
animals were still fearful of both sounds, as if they expected a
shock. But those treated with the drug were no longer afraid of the
tone they had been reminded of under treatment. The process of re-
arousing the rats' memory of being shocked with the one tone while
they were drugged had wiped out that memory completely, while leaving
their memory of the second tone intact.

LeDoux's team also confirms the idea that a part of the brain called
the amygdala is central to this process - communication between
neurons in this part of the brain usually increases when a fearful
memory forms, but it decreases in the treated rats. This shows that
the fearful memory is actually deleted, rather than simply breaking
the link between the memory and a fearful response.

Greg Quirk, a neurophysiologist from the Ponce School of Medicine in
Puerto Rico, thinks that psychiatrists working to treat patients with
conditions such as PTSD will be encouraged by the step
forward. "These drugs would be adjuncts to therapy," he says. "This
is the future of psychiatry - neuroscience will provide tools to help
it become more effective."

<http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070305/full/070305-17.html>

Scientists say nerves use sound, not electricity
Last Updated: Friday, March 9, 2007 | 7:13 PM ET
CBC News <http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/03/09/science-
nervessound-20070309.html>

The common view that nerves transmit impulses through electricity is
wrong and they really transmit sound, according to a team of Danish
scientists.

The Copenhagen University researchers argue that biology and medical
textbooks that say nerves relay electrical impulses from the brain to
the rest of the body are incorrect.

"For us as physicists, this cannot be the explanation," said Thomas
Heimburg, an associate professor at the university's Niels Bohr
Institute. "The physical laws of thermodynamics tell us that
electrical impulses must produce heat as they travel along the nerve,
but experiments find that no such heat is produced."

Heimburg, an expert in biophysics who received his PhD from the Max
Planck Institute in Goettingen, Germany — where biologists and
physicists often work together in a rare arrangement — developed the
theory with Copenhagen University's Andrew Jackson, an expert in
theoretical physics.

According to the traditional explanation of molecular biology, an
electrical pulse is sent from one end of the nerve to the other with
the help of electrically charged salts that pass through ion channels
and a membrane that sheathes the nerves. That membrane is made of
lipids and proteins.

Heimburg and Jackson theorize that sound propagation is a much more
likely explanation. Although sound waves usually weaken as they
spread out, a medium with the right physical properties could create
a special kind of sound pulse or "soliton" that can propagate without
spreading or losing strength.

The physicists say because the nerve membrane is made of a material
similar to olive oil that can change from liquid to solid through
temperature variations, they can freeze and propagate the solitons.

The scientists, whose work is in the Biophysical Society's
Biophysical Journal, suggested that anesthetics change the melting
point of the membrane and make it impossible for their theorized
sound pulses to propagate.

The researchers could not immediately be reached for comment.

<http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/03/09/science-nervessound-
20070309.html>

'Flying' in your sleep may be a paralysis
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 05/03/2007
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?
view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/connected/2007/03/05/nsleep06.xml>

People who have out-of-body experiences, such as flying along a
tunnel towards a heavenly light, are more likely to suffer a strange
effect called sleep paralysis, according to a survey that adds to
mounting evidence for a biological explanation for the experience.

During sleep paralysis, people experience a kind of breakdown between
states of consciousness which takes place on the fringe of sleep,
either when falling asleep or waking. Because the brain turns off the
body's ability to move during dreaming, muscles can lose their tone,
or tension, causing paralysis.

The details of sleep paralysis vary from person to person. Some hear
vague sounds, indistinct voices and demonic gibberish. Others see
hallucinations of humans, animals and supernatural creatures. There
is a striking inability to move or to speak, or a weight on the chest.

advertisementAlso common are feelings of rising off the bed or
flying. In addition, people report out-of-body experiences, sometimes
accompanied by "autoscopy" when they look down on themselves. Not
surprisingly, these moments are accompanied by fear.

Throughout history, there have also been accounts of people having
visions on the brink of death - what are now called "near-death
experiences".

Today, the two odd effects are linked by a study that backs the idea
that the near-death experience is a biological experience, rather
than anything to do with a spiritual dimension, a glimpse of heaven
or the existence of the soul.

People who have had near-death experiences are also likely to have
suffered sleep paralysis, according to the survey published by a team
in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology, by
Prof Kevin Nelson, from the University of Kentucky, Lexington.

In a survey of 55 people who had a "near-death experience" - defined
as a time during a life-threatening episode when a person experienced
a variety of feelings, including unusual alertness, seeing an intense
light, and a feeling of peace - he found three quarters had an out-of-
body experience and half of them had also felt they had left their
body during the transition between wakefulness and sleep.

"We found that 96 per cent (24 of 25) of near-death subjects having
sleep paralysis also had an out-of-body experience either during
sleep transition or near-death," said Prof Nelson.

In a control group of 55 people, three reported an out-of-body
experience. Two of them also suffered sleep paralysis. Prof Nelson
says this suggests the same brain circuitry plays a role.

The sleep paralysis linked with out-of-body experiences was thought
rare, but may strike between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of people at
least once.

They report sensations of floating, flying, falling or leaving one's
body. It ranges from relatively tranquil floating experiences to
horrible feelings of falling or rising at high speed.


Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of
Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any
medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see
Copyright

Subliminal images impact on brain

The brain does register subliminal images even if a person is unaware
they have seen them, UK researchers report.

The research, in Current Biology, suggests subliminal advertising is
probably effective.

The practice, which was first used in the 1950s, has been banned in
the UK, but is still permitted in the US.

Using brain scans, a team from University College, London, showed
people only registered the images if the brain had "spare capacity".


  If there is 'spare capacity', in terms of attention, the brain will
allocate that resource to subliminal activity
Dr Bahador Bahrami, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience

Subliminal images may be contained in other information, which people
are aware of receiving.

The researchers cite the example of the film Fight Club, where a
character who works as a cinema projectionist inserts a single frame
of pornography into the 24 frames of a film shown each second.

In the movie, those watching were unaware of the split-second shot,
but felt depressed or aggressive afterwards.

'Invisible' objects

Although it has long been thought that subliminal images can be
detected without people being aware of them, and have been used in
techniques such as subliminal advertising, this is the first time
researchers have provided physiological evidence of the impact.

The seven participants in the study wore red-blue filter glasses that
projected faint images of everyday objects, such as an iron, on to
one eye and a strong flashing image on the other.

The strong flashing image meant the participants were not consciously
aware of the faint images projected on to the other eye.

At the same time, they were asked to carry out an easy task, such as
picking out the letter T from a stream of letters, or a harder task
of picking out a white N or a blue Z.

Using functional MRI brain scanning, the researchers found that
during the easy task the brain registered the 'invisible' object
although the participants were unaware they had seen it.

This was highlighted by activity in a part of the brain called the
primary visual cortex.

But during the harder task, which required more concentration, the
fMRI scan did not pick up any relevant brain activity suggesting the
participants had not registered the subliminal image.

Buying power?

Dr Bahador Bahrami, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience,
said: "What's interesting here is that your brain does log things
that you aren't even aware of and can't ever become aware of.

"The brain is open to what's around it. So if there is 'spare
capacity', in terms of attention, the brain will allocate that
resource to subliminal activity.

"These findings point to the sort of impact that subliminal
advertising may have on the brain.

"What this study doesn't address is whether this would then influence
you to go out and buy a product."

Dr Bahrami is set to carry out more research to evaluate the further
impact of subliminal words and images.

Story from BBC NEWS:
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/6427951.stm>

I am so bummed out by this news. Rhea White was one of my great
inspirations for the Anomaly Archives. Her efforts with the
Exceptional Human Experience Network inspired me to found my lending
library. I've been worried about her for the past couple years and
have morbidly wondered what would happen to her organization when she
passes. Then today I read the news ...

miles
-=-=-

Dr. Rhea A. White
Monday, February 26, 2007

Dr. (Hon.) Rhea A. White passed away gently on Saturday morning,
February 24, 2007. She inspired so many people during her long career
in parapsychology and exceptional human experience that she is
already sorely missed.

Rhea was planning to become a golf pro in her early years. While at
Penn State, she had a Near-Death Experience that completely turned
around her life. She studied everything she could that came even
close to her experience and was accepted to work with J.B. and Louisa
Rhine at the Duke Lab. She enjoyed many hours discussing the field
with them and their colleagues. Carl Jung's works also made a big
impact on her life.

She received her Master's in Library Science and while a Librarian
for the East Meadow Public Library in New York, she worked as Editor
for several journals in the field. Rhea is in Who's Who in the World,
Who's Who in America, Who's Who of American Women, and Who's Who in
Science and Engineering. She mentored numerous people during her
vibrant career and at the time of her death was Editor-in-Chief of
the JASPR, and Founder and President of the Exceptional Human
Experience Network. Her vita spans thirteen pages. A tributes' page
to Rhea has been started at the EHE Network website, www.ehe.org.

For those who would like to remember Rhea, please send donations to:
Angels for Animals, 120 Croatan Lane, New Bern, North Carolina,
28562. In the memo line please write: Rhea White Cat Fund.

February 18, 2007
Lives
Ghost in the Dream
By DINAH LENNEY

The night after I learned my father was missing, my 4-year-old son,
Jake, had a nightmare. I didn't know yet that my father had been
robbed and stabbed, left to die on the banks of the Hudson by a
couple of teenagers. It would be almost three days before his body
was found in the rain, curled onto its side, covered in dirt and
blood.

People say that children are intuitive and that they know when
something's up, and I'm sure they're right. But we were careful and
we didn't let on. We kept the truth from our kids because we didn't
know what the truth would turn out to be. I may have been snappish
and tense, but I never hinted it had anything to do with their
grandfather. So when Jake with the big heart, Jake who is innately
spiritual and helplessly connected to the universe, Jake, who was my
father's only grandson, woke in the middle of the night weeping
inconsolably to tell us he dreamed that bad men had taken his daddy,
my husband, away, I was certain he'd been confused by a ghostly
visitor.

We soothed Jake, we sang to him, we held him until he fell asleep. We
tiptoed downstairs to bed and pulled up the comforter, and I told
Fred, my husband: "Well, he's dead, he must be. I mean, he must have
been here, telling Jake goodbye."

At first I was envious about my son's night visitor, but weeks later,
long after my father's body was found, I started to have dreams of my
own. My father was a scarecrow in a tuxedo at a masquerade ball,
swinging from the rafters like a huge piñata. My father was driving
me to an appointment, and I was buckled in the back seat, wearing
knee socks and penny loafers, even though I'm a woman over 40. My
father's will had been read, his estate divided; I was bequeathed
50,000 sliced onions.

When he's dead in my dreams, my father's head bobs in and out of
rooms like an odd note on a player piano. But sometimes he appears
full-bodied and all of a piece, wearing an overcoat, waiting to pick
me up and take me somewhere; I'm packing a suitcase in the dream,
endlessly packing. I want to wake up, to stop finding clothes that
have to be folded and stowed, not enough space, not enough luggage.
It's a dream that goes on in spite of interruptions — it picks up
where it left off even after I get up to go to the bathroom. It's
exhausting, because I know I'm dreaming. I keep trying to negotiate a
shift, a different kind of torture — just no more packing, please.
All the while, all night long, my father waits for me and my
overstuffed bags, leaning against his big sedan and chewing the side
of his thumb, silent. What I don't know, what I don't remember until
I wake up, is that he's dead.

In a way that's irrational and narcissistic, naïvely superstitious,
I've mostly assured myself that nothing else can happen to me or
mine. We've been hit once and hit hard, and what are the chances that
one family would suffer more than one tragedy? But bad things can
happen to the same people over and over again, with no rhyme or
reason and nobody keeping cosmic score. And if the whole situation is
more (or less) mysterious than it seems? If there is life after
death? If there are angry ghosts? What if my father wouldn't rest
until he took one of us along with him? What if he wanted Jake? You
can't have him, I'd insist in my head, when my son ran a high fever,
caught a weird stomach flu, took a scary tumble on the playground.

The summer after my father's death, when Jake was 5, he became
separated from us on a beach in Carpinteria, a little town just south
of Santa Barbara, where we'd gone to visit friends for the day. It
was so unlike him — he was appropriately wary of the water and never
one to wander off. But one minute he was beside me, the next he was
gone. Fred and I stood up to our knees in the surf, shouting his
name, scanning the beach, the waves.

"Somebody help me, somebody help!" I screamed.

Out of nowhere, a woman — bleached blond is all I can remember — came
toward me, holding my baby's hand in hers.

"Is this your boy?" she asked.

Jake was crying convulsively, and I dropped to my knees in the sand
to hold him.

"I'm here, honey, Mommy's here," I said out loud, but in my head, I
was shaking my fist. "You can't have him," I scolded my father. "He's
mine, not yours."

Ridiculous, I know. My father has no posthumous plans for my
children. He's dust, or if he isn't, then he wishes them long, happy
lives and infinite good fortune. He would only protect them, if he
could, keep them safe and happy and well.

When I looked up to thank the stranger (and you have to wonder, don't
you, for a moment, who sent her), she had disappeared in the crowd.

Dinah Lenney is an actress and the author of "Bigger Than Life: A
Murder, a Memoir," which will be published next month. This essay is
adapted from the book.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/magazine/18Lives.t.html?
_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print>