MindPlace in history

[Ard]

In the nineties I've been involved a lot with all sorts of mindmachines (AVS and biofeedback). Since I sold my mindmachine shop 'Wide Minds' in Amsterdam in 1999 I haven't been following the market very much and only used the products I still had left incidentally. When this year I started to reacquaint myself with mindmachines in general, I quickly found the Dutch distributor for MindPlace, a company I never heard of in the time I was in the business. At the time I sold some of the machines of Synetics Systems, such as the BioLight and I thought they also sold the Thoughtstream (not too sure however).

Purely out of curiosity, I'd be interested to know if MindPlace has/had anything to do with Synetics, or where the company generally came from.

[Andy]

MindPlace was Synetics. https://mindplace.com/pages/about-us

If you are on Facebook, scroll to the bottom of our timeline which shows the early products made by Synetics.
https://www.facebook.com/MindPlace/timeline

[Ard]

Thanks Andy. Another page I apparently overlooked

[Robert Austin]

Hello, Ard--welcome to our Forums! We launched MindPlace in around 1998--at that time we were considering opening mini-stores in shopping malls with that name, which much more aptly describes what we do than "Synetic Systems," but for various reasons ($$) decided not to pursue that path. We also established SynchroMed as a separate R&D business in 1996, and hired Dr. Tom Budzynski as our Research Director. Those were fun times, and Tom, His wife Helen, and her graduate student Jean Tang (now a professor at the University of Washington) ran a study at two Universities on the effect of AVS+GSR (modified BioLight protocol) on academic performance, resulting in a published paper (and Master's thesis for Jean). We also performed a number of small N studies on multifrequency and multicolor stimulation, which lead to the creation of the Proteus, Procyon and Kasina. One of these days I'll pull that data out of storage and scan to PDF & post them here.
-Robert

[Ard]

Thanks for that, Robert. Such an interesting story. Too bad those shops didn't pan out. In the nineties in The Netherlands AVS, or brainmachines as we called them, were introduced by Luc Sala who, as far as I know, was the first here to open a shop and sell them. I worked with him for a few years as we tried to reach a wider audience than just the early adopters. When I opened Wide Minds in '96 I focussed mainly on therapists and business people. Went to a lot of tradeshows and did a lot of introduction sessions with the AVS devices and a very interesting EEG-feedback system called Mind Surfer, somewhat comparable to the Brain Tracer but a little more advanced. At one point I even helped Michael Hutchison organise a workshop in Amsterdam and got to meet the guy who inspired me more than anyone to get involved with this new technology through his Megabrain books. Happy times indeed.

Interesting to know that Tom Budzynski is involved; his "Clinical Guide to Light and Sound" was a longtime favorite of mine. Looking forward to those studies you mentioned. Along with the articles already on the supportpage here (and the old Megabrain Reports!) you got a true information treasurehouse here :-)