Building a coil for generating ELF magnetic fields

[GVP]

I am interested in replicating Bob Beck's work in the attached PDF document, dating back to 1978.

After building a variety of coils Beck was able to demonstrate EEG entrainment with a 9-foot coil and by broadcasting an amplified Schumann Resonance frequency.

The idea would be to interface said coil with some of the current systems used for EEG entrainment such as the Procyon AVS system, which utilizes photic light stimulation in conjunction with GanzFrames (sunglasses with multicolor SMD LEDs to generate different patterns and sequences within the EEG spectrum):

http://tinyurl.com/6rmszk3

The Procyon AVS has several factory sessions, as well as a detailed session editing tool that can be used to create custom sequences to drive EEG entrainment and compel hemispheric synchronization. The down side to such as a system however is that fact that you have to wear glasses for the sessions as the Procyon AVS is photic light based.

I would like to replicate Beck's work with his Schumann pickup coil that he created, and then use that as an interface to the Procyon AVS which in theory would provide for the same benefits as the Procyon AVS but without the requirement to wear the GanzFrame glasses.

Any thoughts on this? My initial goal was a small prototype coil similar to the one described in the attached paper, and driven by a DC amp from someone like Mini Circuits (http://www.minicircuits.com/products/amplifiers_smt_gpw.shtml )

What I am unsure of is the "tunability" of such a coil; Beck's original work was a simple recreation of the Schumann Resonance with a pure sine wave, the Procyon AVS has the ability to run the entire gamut of the EEG range so ideally the coil/coils would be able to also resonate at all of those different bands within the EEG spectrum.

The power output would be minimal, I think Beck references milliwatt output power in some of his papers he published on this subject.

Any thoughts on creating this? I have zero RF knowledge whatsoever unfortunately.

Thanks in advance

 

[Antiphon]

Make sure you have a kill switch in your hand or you're liable to end up like Simon Van Gelder in "Dagger of the Mind".

 

[GVP]

Doubtful. EEG entrainment and the therapeutic benefits thereof are well documented in the scientific community. I would be more concerned about the ill effects of the ambient 60Hz power fields that surround everything these days as opposed to building a coil to generate the Earth's natural Schumann Resonance frequency.

 

[berkeman]

Welcome to the PF, GVP.

There is a list of allowed peer-reviewed scientific journals at the Rules link at the top of the page:

A list of journals that may be used as academic references can be found at the following link:
http://scientific.thomson.com/index.html
If you have problems with the search feature, you can view the entire list here.
http://www.thomsonscientific.com/cgi...cgi?PC=MASTER

We only discuss mainstream science that has been published in the peer-reviewed journals on that list. Can you provide some links to articles in those journals that apply to what you want to discuss above?

 

[GVP]

Attached to this message is the primary study this project is predicated upon, which is a 1999 work published in the Journal of Neurotherapy, "Academic Performance Enhancement with Photic Stimulation", related to a process informally referred to as "Brain Brightening".

Using daily photic stimulation sessions over a six week period, the study participants recognized significant boosts in cognitive performance including enhanced information retention and accelerated learning capabilities, the effects of which lasted at least six months after the study concluded. The theory presented in this paper is that EEG entrainment via photic stimulation can excite unused neural pathways by way of increased cerebral bloodflow increases. Some of the additional benefits listed in this report are for stroke patients (regaining speech and motor functions adversely affected by the stroke etc). The original work on EEG entrainment cited by the authors of this paper date back to 1934, so I believe the positive effects of EEG entrainment/hemispheric synchronization should be well established at this point if the Journal of Neurotherapy is for some reason not a part of this forum's corpus of accepted scientific literature.

Photic stimulation is inconvenient due to the requirement of wearing glasses for the stimulation sessions, which also precludes the participant from any active learning exercises while the stimulation session is taking place. Some of this is being remedied with more recent GanzFrame variants which are "open eye", basically a ring of LEDs around glass frames so that the participant can keep their eyes open during the photic stimulation sessions.

However, if Beck et al's work is on point, then it seems feasible that a tuned coil as a replacement for the photic glasses would provide an easy and reliable method of inducing EEG entrainment and hemispheric synchronization to provide the benefits of the paper cited above and attached to this message.