Robert Austin

Excellent stuff Robert! I hope this is the first of many such posts and it will encourage people to share patterns and try their hand at programming. I wonder if there is any theoretical body of knowledge on how these patterns are perceived and synthesized by our visual cortex? I imagine it is encompassed somewhat in the study of Persistence of Vision or optical illusions but I intuitively sense there is much more going on here.

Wow, great tips Robert! Thanks!

Good question Scott, I am reading a book on how the mind gets tricked when seeing visual illusions .. I wonder if there is a relationship. I'll let you know if I find anything. The book, by the way is: Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about our everyday deceptions by Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde.

Check out Heinrich Kluver's book, "Mescal and the mechanisms of hallucination" - and you'll notice that the sorts of visual imagery shown in his book often match those you see during photic stimulation. He called these 'form constants' (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_constant). J D Cowan writes about the sorts of patterns which form in the visual cortex (using hallucinogens, but I think this applies to photic stim as well) - you can find some of his work online. One phenomenon I noticed, especially with single color, single frequency stimulation was that the stimulation frequency seemed to slow to a stop for short periods, even though the lights were still running at a fixed frequency. I wonder if those are moments when true 'entrainment' occurs: that is, when my collective brainwave activity was following the lights. From what I've read, this typically will occur for only a few seconds at a time, so mostly we are observing the 'frequency following effect' rather than 'entrainment' per se.

I have noticed these 'stop-gaps' as well. When I know it is really working and I go deep there is a sense of 'expansion'. That is, it is like emerging from the shadows into a large (infinite?) plane (like maybe a really large warehouse) It is just a sense of 'space' opening up. Astral plane some would say. However, it is a definite feeling and crossover that occurs. It took me a long time to be able to maintain this perspective and work in the space. Any others experience this?

I can attest but wouldn't admit to in a court of law that the imagery of psychedelics is very similar to that of photic stimulation. 'Flashback' triggers are a very interesting topic to me as well.

Thanks Robert ! This exercise has given me a new appreciation for the subtleties of programming these machines for the purposes of `mind art '. Although I can't say I can see a gradual shift in colour per se - what I have noticed is that I seem to get periodic flushes of much deeper colour where the flashing seems to dwell - its like there is a resonant frequency within the entrainment frequency - it seems to be faster than the difference between the pulse frequency ..I can see perhaps 5 or 6 strong flushes of a deeper green peak and subside over a 1 minute period which is twice as many as I would expect if it were just the resonant frequency between the two channels of colour. When I run both channels at the same frequency i don't really get the effect, and the colour stays more an amber perception. Running the two colours in perfect unison also gives me a more uniform visual field with less visual artifacts. I spent a fair bit of time programming the exercise in two channels to trigger via audiostrobe with Mind Workstation but did not get nearly as vivid effects as programming the machine directly. I also find my old style glasses to produce more vivid visuals than th etri -colour glasses but then I don't have any comparable 2 colour Ganzfield frames to make a direct comparison.

Just for fun , while using the tri - colour I programmed in a 0.3 HZ blue colour pulse/wash underneath and found it added a whole new ambience to the exercise. Very nice...