Neuro 101
We help you track your brain by leveraging cutting-edge mobile electroencephalography (EEG) devices (see image) and neuroscientific research (below).
What is EEG? EEG is a neuroimaging technique. It differs from other techniques, like functional MRI, in that instead of showing you precisely where there is more/less activity in the brain, it shows you precisely when the activity happens. At rest with eyes closed (see image), you can record the concert of rhythmic oscillations that your neurons produce as they fire together in synch, providing proxy measures of “Cognition” “Emotion” or “Awareness.”
What is a brain wave? An awake, active brain requires that the brain perform many jobs, like a person sporadically opening and closing filing cabinets in your head. In this analogy, the filing cabinets are firing neurons. Now imagine that person was in charge of your sleeping brain and their only job is to check that the cabinets can be opened and closed periodically, a job that can be done simultaneously, resulting in a loud beat upon each closure. Your neurons, like many systems in nature, synchronize at rest, producing in concert, the rhythm of your brain. The slowest rhythm or frequency occurs in sleep, the delta wave. The amplitudes can be thought of as loudness, called power. In general, the louder the brain waves are all together, the less brain activity: “more wave power = less brain power.” The slowest waves are indicative of the least activity, from delta, up to theta, alpha, beta, and gamma.
How does Psynautics derive its measures of Cognition, Emotion, and Awareness? Our experimental neural markers of Cognition, Emotion, and Awareness are not secrets, but derived from peer-reviewed neuroscientific research, alongside unpublished data in preparation for peer-review (below). Our headbands have two main electrodes, one over the left frontal lobe, and another over the right frontal lobe. The lobes of the brain generally perform different functions. For instance, at the back of the head, the occipital lobe is required for vision. Testing your new knowledge of brain waves, you might not be surprised to know that when you close your eyes, your neurons in that region synchronize in their firing to produce high-powered waves. Why? because they don’t need to work on the filing cabinets of shapes, colors, left, right, up, down, etc… they’re just vibing!
Frontal lobe: your control center. EEG will pick up electrical activity from across your brain and body if you’re moving, but the electrode placements do provide some spatial resolution (shave your head and wear it backwards if you don’t believe me!) What does your frontal lobe control? Movements, emotions, planning, etc. Our unpublished data, alongside existing literature, indicates that the left hemisphere of the frontal lobe is related to the control of emotion (the logical, “everything is going to be OK” function). Brain waves on the left side, particularly in the alpha frequency, are predictive of mood disorders. This is how we derive the Emotion measure. On the right side, the hemisphere may be more intuitive, making predictions. This function is impaired in individuals with substance use disorders, who show louder brain waves there, at every frequency. This is how we derive the Cognition measure. Finally, our Awareness measure is simply the complexity of the signal, which is lowest in anesthesia, low in sleep, moderate at rest, higher when you watch a movie, and so on. “Awareness” might not be as accurate as “Drowsiness” which is the inverted measure, but it might be possible that it sounds cooler than drowsiness.
How might basic brain measures change with age? Between sexes?
Using Muse EEG headbands, Hashemi et al. found that males and females seldom differed in EEG power, the measure inversely related to cortical activity and cognitive function. However, over the lifespan, this measure was lowest (peak cognitive function) just after 40 years of age (Fig. 1).
How might other variables like education, substance history, or health status affect EEG power? Can cognitive function, as assessed by this measure, become restored through behavioral or dietary changes? Your participation will inform these questions while you learn where you stand among these measures.
Does “microdosing” affect EEG data?
While studies of repeated microdosing are pending, Murray and colleagues found that acute administration of vey low doses of LSD affected key EEG measures. Specifically the low doses reduced EEG power and increased EEG complexity, measures associated with increased cortical activity and conscious awareness, respectively (Fig. 3). Notably, while Blissful State was reported, participants endorsed no other measure of altered states of consciousness.. These data replicate findings after high doses of LSD (Muthukumaraswamy, et al., 2013; Carhart-Harris et al., 2014), while neither EEG measure is present alongside THC induced altered states (Murray et al., 2022a; 2022b).
What are altered states of consciousness?
Altered states of consciousness (ASC) represent an acute and marked deviation in subjective experience from normal/waking consciousness (Dittrich, 1998, Studerus et al., 2010). ASC arise through diverse induction methods, such as meditation (Med), cannabis (Can), and others (Fig. 4). Despite differences in induction, ASC share similar features, particularly at high doses, which act on the body to produce a trance-like state.
ASC might distort or magnify consciousness, with roles that are either “hallucinogenic” or mind-manifesting/”psychedelic.” One way to test whether some ASCs are more ”psychedelic” than others may be to determine whether reported insights/observations are replicated and validated across individuals and states.
To begin, here we examined 175 experience reports from Erowid.com and Reddit.com to determine how individual reports compare and contrast. We found that meditation reports clustered together and were most self-similar (darkest square; Fig. 4), while least similar reports belonged to psilocybin. This difference might reflect more reporting of intersubjective mindful awareness during meditation vs more reporting of idiosyncratic hallucinations after psilocybin.
One limitation of this interpretation is the large variation in set and setting in the Erowid and Reddit experience reports. Psynautics aims to collect new experience report data using a protocol that calls for a meditative set and setting for every ASC session, paired with EEG.
We hope our database will identify important clues to the fundamental nature of brain and mind.
