Altered states through light alone

[Bancopuma]

Article a friend beamed my way that may be of interest to some, describes experience of a machine that uses LED's to apparently activate the pineal gland and induce quite profound altered states, sounds like it's on a whole different level to a strobe light alone.

I Don't Need Drugs, I'm High on Light, Baby

Welcome to a future where you can trip balls without pissing away precious serotonin.

www.vice.com

 

[Global]

I have a mind machine that uses flashing LEDs for brain entrainment. This seems to be sort of a bigger version of the same technology. I'm not buying into the pineal stimulation though. That sounds incredibly iffy. Yes, it can produce altered states, but if that lamp is anything like my mind machine, it sounds like the article is overselling it by severalfold.

 

[Shayku]

I don't know if anyone has seen the work of Kurt Hentschlager, but his FEED performance in particular has induced what were by far the most intense hallucinations I've had outside of using a substance. Except for an anticipation-building video in the beginning, it's all strobes and smoke. Amazing work, don't miss it if you get the chance. I haven't seen Zee, but the basic premise is similar I believe.

http://www.kurthentschlager.com/portfolio/feed/feed.html

 

[Seldom]

the basic mechanism is called the frequency following response, people have been doing it for thousands of years, ancient versions used spinning wheels with spokes to achieve altered states. binaural and monoaural beats work through the same principal. as you'd know the rates at which cells in your brain fire are separated into different bands, x-x hz = alpha, delta, theta etc. the presentation of a stimulus at say 40 hz for some reason lead firing rates to tend toward synchronization with that stimulus, and produce the corresponding subjective effect. it was originally studied by a guy called Heinrich Dove in the 1800s, it's had a lot of snake oil claims about what it can do, but the existence of the effect is well established. my suggestion if you want to explore what you can do with the ffr you should get the open source binaural beat program called gnaural