Neuroprogrammer 2, Procyon, Thought Sounds

I did my first 'neuroprogrammer'-sourced session this evening. OK, I only did a small part of one, but enough to get some idea of it.

To make this happen I opened NP2 software and listed the preset sessions. I plugged the cord (1/16 jack) from my computer headphone port into the auxilliary port of the Procyon, then plugged in the headphones and goggles. I changed the mode on the Procyon to "AS" (audiostrobe, as that is what is encoded in the NP2 file(s)). And then I pressed play on my computer, for that NP2 session.

The sound is certainly better. It's my understanding that MindPlace's "Proteus" unit, which was released prior to the Procyon, is actually way better with sound, just not as advanced with light. One assumes their next product will combine the best of those worlds. In the meantime that is why I got NP2 software, so I could handle the sound in great detail.

The light is only red and green (no blue) because that is what the AudioStrobe format (which NP2 is putting out so that the Procyon can read it for the goggles) defaults to. Maybe AS will upgrade their own options at some point but for now that's the tradeoff. It was ok. I mean the colors were not as interesting but the sound was better. I would say it was equal as a result.

I was using the NP2 present "Hypnotic Relax Example" because I had begun by looking at the session file, considering when I'll have time to begin building one of my own to start experimenting. I did not expect any preset to be all that great frankly so I did not intend to do a whole session, just to maybe sit through 10 minutes of something, anything, and see what the difference was between using this as a session-source vs. the Procyon's stuff.

I noticed at one point that I had just suddenly shifted into serious trance and felt good. I interrupted myself to pull off my goggles and lift up my laptop screen so I could see what the session was doing at that point.

It was just at a change point, just before-during-after that point somewhere, about two (2) minutes in. All the various things going on are at 12 Hz and 10 Hz; the 12 had finished a cycle of coming down from 14 Hz and the 10 had finished a cycle of coming up from 8 Hz. On the other side of the point they had shifted the other way, the 8 starting a ramp toward 12 and the twelve starting a ramp toward 9.

I stopped the session at that point as I was interrupted by "the real world", which apparently is filled with people who think me sitting around in the dark with headphones and matrix-like reflective shades flashing colored lights is kind of odd.

(What I really need is a black light Crowley poster just to freak everybody out.) (Just kidding.) (I'm really not 16 anymore, I swear.)

I actually wondered why I would respond so well to this compared to the sessions I've done with the Procyon presets. I hypothesize that my being more geared to sound as a primary sensory, and perhaps that this multi-track session had only two tones but more cross-confirmation of those tones between the various track options, maybe that made some difference.

(On the left: frequencies are up the left side, timing is across the bottom.)

Next topic: Thought-Sounds:

I got a chance to look this over. Interesting approach they took here. Basically, they provide you all these nice sounds but they are only 6 minutes long each! They provide you software to help you loop them. (I will see if Audacity will let me loop it also.)

I haven't yet listened to any of them, but if the descriptions are any clue, I may need some Nag Champa incense, Ingo Swann paintings, and maybe some feathers and crystals when I do. Heh. I think it'll be cool though.

PJ

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First Experience With Brainwave Stimulation Procyon

I got my Procyon! I decided I would use a couple of the pre-set sessions for fun.

It figures, given this is me we are talking about, that I skipped the first 45 useful, targeted, therapeutic options and started with the 'experimental' section. First I chose #48, "Kaleidascopic Mind", a 20 minute 'Mind-Art' session. The description reads: Complex imagery, with an emphasis on Mandalas, vortexes, and spin-spaces.

The first thing I realized is something I knew already but the experience brought home: the only audio that the Procyon does on its own is a simple 'tone' that can be programmed for its Hz level. This level can change, will automatically ramp, can be synchronized with the lights, can be simply set to be controlled by one of the light channels for synchronization and ease. But it's just a single simple tone.

If you want rich complex audio, music, noise, etc. you need to either feed your audio file into the your computer and using what they call SynchroMuse, combine this with Procyon visual settings, then download to your hand-held unit. That's a little complicated and I'll cover it in a separate post. Or, run the include patch-cord from your MP3 player to your Procyon.

The second thing, which took about 10 seconds if that, was realizing what an odd effect the video had on my mind. This continued through the whole session although it was constantly changing with the lights.

It's like the visual part of my brain was creating "a real-time half-memory-in-the-present not-visual visual-impression," Not a real memory and not a real visual image but some bizarre place between them.

For example, even though visually, through my eyelids I could 'see' that it was just flashing color X or something, in my brain, I perceived a variety of pictures drawn that moved a bit -- like rotoscoping.

That's the name of a tech that is sketch-over-video animation. It was featured famously in that 80's video 'Take On Me' by Aha, but way more infamously by a satire-spoof in 2008 by Dustin McLean, which I wish I could link to but the bitchy record company forced it off youtube for copyright. (He'd replaced the vocals with a very literal description of what was going on in the kind of abstract video, which is so "mad stupid" in the words of one reviewer it was just can't-breathe-funny.)

The initial visuals and once-in-awhile visuals reminded me of some kind of mental rotoscoping. Entire settings and landscapes and visual situations, things that I couldn't figure out any memory related to or any reason for not-seeing, not-remembering, but something-halfway-between-those. For example, a man and woman are taking something like groceries out of the back of a car in the driveway in a suburban neighborhood. My perspective is about 10' above them to their left from about 10 feet away. Shift to some completely different scene which may or may not involve one or more of the first conceptual or visual elements. Shift again.

Some of them may move dynamically (fluidly), or move with visual slow staccato like a low-frame time-lapse-video effect, or are just like comic book 'stills', multiple related squared pictures where some movement/change has occurred between them, or they get larger or more focused as one element in them changes. When I first got it, it was the comic book fashion, that yielded to the slow visual staccato effect, finally into dynamic, but all with the sort of 'sketch-effect', which is what made me associate the experience to that video which is very much the same thing in the same sequence.

Except, just to make this really confusing, I really didn't see anything like that at all; I didn't "see" anything except some color flashing. And none of it was 'clear'. It was a lot like a lot of remote viewing (psychic) data, especially when I've not viewed in eons and am rather disconnected: some kind of super-intangible internal-impression that 'translates to' a visual impression inside me if I had to use words or categorize it, except not-quite. Humans don't even have a word anywhere near describing this, it's not a shared-experience we talk about.

That was just one initial and occasional form. More often through the session I got something I suspect was related to that but a bit different in effect. Imagine there is some sketch over photo (animated in some cases, like the above variations) and you've run it through some graphics filters so the only thing you actually 'see' of it are these teeeeeeeeny tiny 'sparks' of color (all the same color), like a barely-there short-stroke crosshatching effect on a high contrast mostly white image, except each of the tiny strokes is brighter at one side than the other, that creates a sort of "impressionist-almost-outline" which is set against something so 'subtle' you could call it not-white-on-not-white, which has an ineffable sense of slight-variable-depth, so that this combined with the limited micro-sparky color visuals, almost make sense, and seem to reveal (or barely not quite reveal, depending on how you look at it) the visual detail.

The reason I find this fascinating is because I thought I was going to see colors that then turned themselves into mandalas and geometry.

I haven't got a freaking clue why 3 LEDs would instead create--no matter how subtly, abstractedly, ineffably--quite detailed pictures, video-style scenes, and more. Well they didn't create that. It's more like something inside me "almost" created that but not quite -- almost like a "tip of the tongue can't quite remember" experience but just slightly more.

Philosophically just a little as I experienced it, it felt a tad like "I" as a larger entity, had this entire kaleidascope of combined lives/realities/etc., and the photic flashing was... almost-illuminating something inside-me, from that huge conglomerate of geometric physics-energy potential, and I was seeing just the traces of it with 'hints of context', reflected outside me, like the shadows on Plato's cave walls.

OK, and the rest of it was just neat-o colors and shapes and stuff. Heh.

I did work to relax first, and drink some water first, but when I was done I was kind of tired. Of course I was really sleep deprived so that made sense. But it felt like the tech had something to do with that too though. I wondered if it could cause eye strain. Or if changes in neural blood flow could matter. But I thought I should choose a session that was brief and would leave me feeling more mentally attentive.

So I chose preset #8, 'Attention Booster', a 20 minute session with the description: Alternates between 12 and 18 Hz, with pauses between each. Good for mental activation applications.

I would like to tell you what that experience was like, but apparently about 20 seconds into it I passed out. I woke up hours later. My impression is that I had some "tolerance threshold" that is not so much a gradual thing and I blew past it way too hard and fast. That combined with serious need for sleep, anyway.

I'll try another couple tonight when I'm off work.

PJ

Today's Miscellany

A few links to science papers/links:
http://www.northwest-neurofeedback.com/articles.html

I was minding my own business when my buddy Steph sent me a ref to this woman who is into Paleo eating (in short: lowsugar wholefoods) AND neurofeedback. What a great find! How many of us can there be? Except she knows what she's talking about and I don't, but let's not be picky. I'm learning. (And I'm just not bringing up the recent pesto pasta-breakdown ok.)

I have finished reading everything on the Transparent Corp public site, private members site, and their NP2 documentation (which is considerable), as well as everything I can find on the MindPlace public site, and the Procyon documentation. Excuse me while I rinse off my brain now, that is too much too fast. Unfortunately nearly all of this is "proprietary" documentation. It's even put into files you cannot copy from just to make it even more complicated to take notes in a text file. So it's not easy for me to condense what I am learning into my blog for my friends since I didn't even have a way to summarize it for myself as I went along. Grrr.

I'm having a frustration moment about a couple things. Minor trivia but still.

Procyon's product document just throws in as a tiny note like oh-by-the-way that whatever audio it is playing is automatically 'modulated by the video settings'. Well that set me back. What is the point of deliberately customizing audio and video--often to be pointedly different--if the video then tromps all over the audio? I want to do specific experimentation and hypnotic anchoring and controlling these things separately is important as a result. Maybe it isn't always. Maybe it's just if you do the audio there, not if you import it. I hope.

Update 6/19 ungodly hour AM: you can 'patch through' your own audio and it won't affect that. It only affects (as you choose) tones you create yourself in the editor.

I have a ton of vastly more useful and specific info that I will work on dredging out of myself over the next week.

PJ

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