Reading over my current issue of Psychology Today while curled up in bed with my dog, I found the back section where the ads are. Despite the on-line 'transpersonal' psychology degree offerings, I found a rather interesting ad under the title of SELF IMPROVEMENT:
"GOD HELMET" TECHNOLOGY (as seen on PBS)
Available to the public at long last
www.spiritualbrain.com
With an eyeroll and a sigh, I got up, went to my desk, and typed in the URL. I had heard about the 'God Helmet' only in references to poorly-executed paranormal investigations (cough cough Paranormal State cough cough), and my knowledge of it was very limited.
Todd Murphy is a behavioral neuroscientists who works closely with Dr. Michael Persinger, who created the 'God Helmet' in the 1980's. Now, when I first heard what Murphy specialized in, I became giddy--he and I are of a similar cloth. However, that is where the similarities end. See, for someone who has had countless hours of education and training, Todd Murphy believes in psychic phenomena.
On the website, the SHAKTI helment is being sold as "spiritual technology for altered states, meditation enhancement and mood enhancement." The helmet 'work's by delievering magnetic fields to the brain to open up the user to altered states of consciousness. And here I thought it would be easier, and perhaps cheaper, just to score some LSD.
Now there are several different forms of the SHAKTI that are recommended by the manufacterer to enhance specific needs (spiritual, psychic, etc). The only one 'available to the public' is the Shiva for 'God Helmet' sessions.
Now, I suggest reading this link for the details on the helment, but I'll sum it up here. Basically, this helmet is worn on the head of the user and magnetic pulses are delivered in specific orders to certain parts of the brain to elict certain stages of consciousness. There are 4 'phases', each of which lasts 20-30 minutes. Also, complete sensory deprivation is required during the session.
For only 649$ in US currency, you too can order a SHAKTI helmet. Of course, there are a list of warnings, but if you purchase the item you can simply use it in your own home, there is no medical doctor to assist you or monitor you for any ill effects during it's use. There are safety rules as well, such as only using once a week, and after 6 weeks you need a 3-week break. My question is...why? Is it because these fields can have damaging effect to your brain?
But more interestingly, does this even work? Does SHAKTI help one to self-improve?
The literature from the website does not make it clear, but Dr. Persinger himself was quoted as saying only about 20 subjects have reported seeing God (less than 1 percent). Many of the articles written on the SHAKTI (click here) seem to be related to paranormal activity, one about creating a 'synthetic ghost' is rather interesting. However, after much persuing of the website, I fail to see what self-improving function the SHAKTI is said to have. If there is a probability to see God, or more likely a ghost, is that considered self-improving?
After some searching around, I found the mystic connection to SHAKTI. Apparently, it manipulates the brain into a stage where mystical experiences happen. Let me explain. The website claims that "mystic experiences seem to begin with very negative experiences, ones that inspire the most unpleasant emotions: especially fear and despair." The amygdala is the part of the brain that deals with fear and anxiety and it is manipulated during the session. One side is good feelings, the other bad. During the session, the sides are stimulated alternately. This design was based on the work of Buddah, Jesus and St. Teresa. Oh if only I were joking. Other phases during a SHAKTI session include stimulation of the hippocampus, which is responsible for cognition.
Basically, what it sounds like to me, is that the SHAKTI stimulates and manipulates your brain, putting you in a highly emotional state, and then messes with the way you think. This results in self improvement? Actually, with the long list of warnings and potential side effects (including aggression, seizures, and worsening of psychological disorders), it sounds more like a detriment.
Not all consumers are a discerning as they should be. One who sees this ad and thinks that self-improvement and actualization is as easy as putting some electrodes on your head, because after all it's designed by a doctor, is going to be sorely disappointed, if not hurt.
So I'll post this commentary and perhaps turn the page of the magazine. There is an interesting article about Introverts...
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Science and Psi...do they mix?
Late last night (or perhaps early this morning) I tweeted a link to a recent blog post on Psychology Today. The article title, by Dr. Melissa Burkley, was what caught my eye.
"Have Scientists Finally Discovered Evidence for Psychic Phenomena?!"
Dr. Burkley presents a commentary on a series of studies conducted by Dr. Bem of Cornell University (the article has yet to be published, my guess is that Burkley got a hold of a review copy, a common practice). Burkley summarizes that across nine experiments, Bem examines what is commonly known as 'psi' phenomena. According to the blog, the study is much more elaborate than me playing with my Zener Card smartphone app. The novelty of Bem's approach is what made me raise my eyebrows. "..Bem's studies are unique in that they represent standard scientific methods and rely on well-established principles in psychology. Essentially, he took effects that are considered valid and reliable in psychology...and simply reverse their chronological order," the blog states.
To catch some of you up to speed, let's go over some of the basic terms. The Parapsychological Association defines psi phenomena as an adjective to identify paranormal processes and paranormal causation. To break this definition down even further, the term 'paranormal' just refers to experience that lie just outside the range of scientific explanation. Famed parapsychologists the world over claim to examine psi phenomena in laboratory settings, and there is even a journal in which studies are published for peer review (The Journal of Parapsychology). In fact, a trip through the archives of the Journal reveal several articles by Dr. Bem.
One thing that did strike me as interesting is that Bem takes well-researched principles and examines them in relation to parapsychology. One example was how Bem tested a reversal of the priming effect. The priming effect is a perceptual memory effect where exposure to one item (or stimulus) will 'prime' one's influence to the following stimulus. Below is an example of the priming effect:
Today I went to th grocery store and buogt a atermelon.
As a child, we are exposed to words. We sound them out, learn the grammar rules of the language we are taught, and eventually get to the point where we can recognize words, or even parts of words, simply by seeing them. So when spelling mistakes or letter omissions are present, we 'fill in the gaps.' So if you read 'Today I went to the store and bought a watermelon,' it is because previous exposure to these words have primed you to identify similar words in the same way. This relates heavily in the 'paranormal' and parapsychology fields, for much of the research into paranormal experiences has been labeled as instances of paradeoila, which is a sensory extention of the priming effect (an older, but still interesting article by Michael Shermer can be found here).
What Bem did in his study is examine the priming effect in reverse. Priming studies will expose a subject to a stimulus and ask the subject to label the stimulus (label options are often limited in both options and time for selection). Over the course of the study, the interresponse time between exposure to the stimulus and labeling of the stimulus (which is usually an adjective) decreases, theoretically because the subject has been 'primed'. This priming is futher tested by flashing images almost too fast to 'comprehend', yet the subjects can still respond with the same labels. Bem took the latter part of this process and reversed it, by flashing the label first, then the stimulus (a picture). Reportedly, subjects would categorize the photo and 'know' what word was coming next.
However, many of these psychological principles work the way they do because the order in which things happen. A stimulus occasions behavior, while the consequence reinforces or punishes it. This basic relationship, while not the one looked at in this study, shows that one follows the other for a reason. Perhaps, by reversing the order of the current psychological principles, Bem negated them. And with each experiment averaging 100-150 subjects, a statistical significance of 51percent, this has been averaged out, which obscures individual data. When testing something as sensitive and 'rare' as psi phenomena, wouldn't individual data be of paramount interest?
While this paper certainly poses more questions than answers, Bem seems to believe that it does suggest an efficacy in his methodology and the ability to scientifically test psi phenomena in a laboratory setting. Of this I'm not entirely sure, but I do know one thing...further study is warranted.
Psychology Today Blog Article
"Have Scientists Finally Discovered Evidence for Psychic Phenomena?!"
Dr. Burkley presents a commentary on a series of studies conducted by Dr. Bem of Cornell University (the article has yet to be published, my guess is that Burkley got a hold of a review copy, a common practice). Burkley summarizes that across nine experiments, Bem examines what is commonly known as 'psi' phenomena. According to the blog, the study is much more elaborate than me playing with my Zener Card smartphone app. The novelty of Bem's approach is what made me raise my eyebrows. "..Bem's studies are unique in that they represent standard scientific methods and rely on well-established principles in psychology. Essentially, he took effects that are considered valid and reliable in psychology...and simply reverse their chronological order," the blog states.
To catch some of you up to speed, let's go over some of the basic terms. The Parapsychological Association defines psi phenomena as an adjective to identify paranormal processes and paranormal causation. To break this definition down even further, the term 'paranormal' just refers to experience that lie just outside the range of scientific explanation. Famed parapsychologists the world over claim to examine psi phenomena in laboratory settings, and there is even a journal in which studies are published for peer review (The Journal of Parapsychology). In fact, a trip through the archives of the Journal reveal several articles by Dr. Bem.
So in taking a break from both reading the latest Brad Steiger book and reading articles for an upcoming literature review on the efficacy of metacontingency in the field of behavior analysis, I decided to find an advanced copy of Dr. Bem's 61-page study and take a gander at it for myself. Could more famous last-words be blogged?
CLICK HERE to read it for yourself.
Bem took four standard psychological effects: approach/avoidance, affectiving priming, habitutation, and facilitation of recall, and broke them into a total of nine reversal experiments. Some of the sweeping results that caught my eye were that 8 of the 9 experiments reported occurences of what was later deemed 'psi' phenmonena 'statistically above chance'. With chance being 50percent, most of these 'above chance' measurements were between 51-52percent.
Also, in the precognition detection trials, previous research indicating that self-reported extroverts scored higher in psi phenomena experiments was 'supported' by the data in the current study. I also found myself a bit lost with the overly statistical presentation of the data (then again, I'm not yet versed in statistics as applied to psychology).
One thing that did strike me as interesting is that Bem takes well-researched principles and examines them in relation to parapsychology. One example was how Bem tested a reversal of the priming effect. The priming effect is a perceptual memory effect where exposure to one item (or stimulus) will 'prime' one's influence to the following stimulus. Below is an example of the priming effect:
Today I went to th grocery store and buogt a atermelon.
As a child, we are exposed to words. We sound them out, learn the grammar rules of the language we are taught, and eventually get to the point where we can recognize words, or even parts of words, simply by seeing them. So when spelling mistakes or letter omissions are present, we 'fill in the gaps.' So if you read 'Today I went to the store and bought a watermelon,' it is because previous exposure to these words have primed you to identify similar words in the same way. This relates heavily in the 'paranormal' and parapsychology fields, for much of the research into paranormal experiences has been labeled as instances of paradeoila, which is a sensory extention of the priming effect (an older, but still interesting article by Michael Shermer can be found here).
What Bem did in his study is examine the priming effect in reverse. Priming studies will expose a subject to a stimulus and ask the subject to label the stimulus (label options are often limited in both options and time for selection). Over the course of the study, the interresponse time between exposure to the stimulus and labeling of the stimulus (which is usually an adjective) decreases, theoretically because the subject has been 'primed'. This priming is futher tested by flashing images almost too fast to 'comprehend', yet the subjects can still respond with the same labels. Bem took the latter part of this process and reversed it, by flashing the label first, then the stimulus (a picture). Reportedly, subjects would categorize the photo and 'know' what word was coming next.
However, many of these psychological principles work the way they do because the order in which things happen. A stimulus occasions behavior, while the consequence reinforces or punishes it. This basic relationship, while not the one looked at in this study, shows that one follows the other for a reason. Perhaps, by reversing the order of the current psychological principles, Bem negated them. And with each experiment averaging 100-150 subjects, a statistical significance of 51percent, this has been averaged out, which obscures individual data. When testing something as sensitive and 'rare' as psi phenomena, wouldn't individual data be of paramount interest?
While this paper certainly poses more questions than answers, Bem seems to believe that it does suggest an efficacy in his methodology and the ability to scientifically test psi phenomena in a laboratory setting. Of this I'm not entirely sure, but I do know one thing...further study is warranted.
Psychology Today Blog Article
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Magicial Thinking...Works?
Magical 'thinking' is a form of supersitious behavior, which is a behavior that is learned and sporadically reinforced...and even that contingency relation is questionable. Yet magical thinking is a strong force in our culture. When a football player wears the same pair of socks during every game, because last season he wore them when the team one an important game, he is engaging in magical thinking. A child blowing out birthday cake candles and making a wish, and his father carrying a rabbit's foot in his pocket for luck are also behaving in a similar manner: they made the connectiong between a reinforcer and the behavior. Hence, the supersition is born.
In a recent study published by the University of Cologne researchers wanted to examine the consequences and potential benefits of superstitious behavior. The study looked to demonstrate performance benefits of superstitions, in addition to attempting to identify the psychological mechanisms underlying the superstitions of the subjects.
The study showed that good-luck superstitions, activated with a common saying or action (such as 'break a leg') improved performance in a variety of tasks, including motor dexterity and memory. They also reported that these benefits were produced by changes in self-efficacy, or how the subjects percieved themselves, their goals and their abilities. It also found "increased task persistence consitutes one means by which self-efficacy, enhanced by superstition, improves performance."
So what does this even mean? The latest online issue of Scientific American MIND says not much:
"The influence of the charm depends crucially on your belief in its inherent powers. Once you acknowledge that performance is a functions of what goes on in your brain rather than a product of any mystical properties of the object itself, it becomes useless. That feeling of "I can do this" will wither away as soon as you realize that nothing external, nothing mystical, will influence how you perform--it's just you and your abilities."
Is this going to stop even the logical from participating in these behaviors? I doubt it. I myself carry out specific rituals based on superstition. When I drive through a yellow light, I kiss my fingertips and touch them to the roof of my car. Why? It's a habit, I know I'm not thanking a non-existent angel for guiding me safetly through the yellow light. But I continue to do so. So perhaps the 'underlying motivation' of superstitious behavior is more complex than simply believing in the object or the action.
Sources:
Scientific American MIND article
Abstract for Study
In a recent study published by the University of Cologne researchers wanted to examine the consequences and potential benefits of superstitious behavior. The study looked to demonstrate performance benefits of superstitions, in addition to attempting to identify the psychological mechanisms underlying the superstitions of the subjects.
The study showed that good-luck superstitions, activated with a common saying or action (such as 'break a leg') improved performance in a variety of tasks, including motor dexterity and memory. They also reported that these benefits were produced by changes in self-efficacy, or how the subjects percieved themselves, their goals and their abilities. It also found "increased task persistence consitutes one means by which self-efficacy, enhanced by superstition, improves performance."
So what does this even mean? The latest online issue of Scientific American MIND says not much:
"The influence of the charm depends crucially on your belief in its inherent powers. Once you acknowledge that performance is a functions of what goes on in your brain rather than a product of any mystical properties of the object itself, it becomes useless. That feeling of "I can do this" will wither away as soon as you realize that nothing external, nothing mystical, will influence how you perform--it's just you and your abilities."
Is this going to stop even the logical from participating in these behaviors? I doubt it. I myself carry out specific rituals based on superstition. When I drive through a yellow light, I kiss my fingertips and touch them to the roof of my car. Why? It's a habit, I know I'm not thanking a non-existent angel for guiding me safetly through the yellow light. But I continue to do so. So perhaps the 'underlying motivation' of superstitious behavior is more complex than simply believing in the object or the action.
Sources:
Scientific American MIND article
Abstract for Study
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