Using Flashing Light to Restore Gamma Rhythms in the Brain

[Wayne]

Last week I watched a short video segment on Nightly Business Report on using flashing lights to restore Gamma rhythms in patients with Alzheimer's. I couldn't find the video online, but did find a TRANSCRIPT. -- Below is just part of that transcript.

I found it pretty fascinating, and believe there's probably a good chance it could be effectively used for many of the brain issues associated with ME/CFS. I recall a thread on PR several years ago on staring at "static" on TV to affect brain function. As I recall, some of those who tried it found it to be at least somewhat helpful. I'll post a link if I can find it again.

All the Best, Wayne
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Another early approach is even more radical: the idea that we could treat Alzheimer’s with light.

In a paper published in the journal Nature in December, researchers at MIT led by Dr. Li-Huei Tsai found that light entrainment cleared plaques from the brains of mice. The idea focuses on a brainwave frequency known as gamma.

“Gamma rhythms are known to be involved in higher-order brain functions, like perception, attention, and the formation of working memory,” Tsai said from her lab at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Those rhythms — neurons firing synchronously in the brain — have been found to be impaired in people with Alzheimer’s, Tsai explained. So she set out to see what would happen if they could be restored.

She decided to use a flashing light to aim to restore the rhythms — an idea she says she got after seeing research from the late 1980s in cats. And sure enough, by rigging LED lights to flash at the gamma frequency — 40 times per second — her team found gamma rhythms were restored in the brains of mice.

“We were delighted,” Tsai said. So then the question of what happens when those rhythms come back in an Alzheimer’s disease brain.

“It was unbelievable,” Tsai recalled. “At first we were very surprised to see that after we induced gamma rhythms in the Alzheimer’s model, the amyloid is greatly reduced. Within just one hour, we saw the amyloid level was cut almost by half.”

There were other signs of good news in the brain, too: an effect on tau and inflammation, also implicated in Alzheimer’s, plus a restoring of the function of microglia — what Tsai described as the brain’s janitors — against amyloid.

 

[Wayne]

This video from PBS focused on exploring the possible connection between concussive blasts in war zones and PTSD. What I found fascinating about the report starts at the 1:20 mark. It shows fairly dramatic images from the brain which shows "widespread brown scarring".

That was dramatic enough, but at the 5:12 mark, the doctor explains how this brown scarring--even though extremely pronounced--is NOT picked up by routine MRI and CAT scans.

Makes me think many of us with ME/CFS could have some kind of widespread damage as well, but that is not picked up by conventional medical scanning. Which makes me think more about taking steps to donate my brain for scientific research so researchers might discover what it might reveal.

http://www.pbs.org/video/2365990166/

 

[Wayne]

Here's a link to that PR thread I mentioned in my original post. In it, the main topic appears to be theta brain wave state--not the gamma rhythms that's in the title of this thread...

"TV Static Cured My ME"

 

[Not dead yet!]

Here's a link to that PR thread I mentioned in my original post. In it, the main topic appears to be theta brain wave state--not the gamma rhythms that's in the title of this thread...

"TV Static Cured My ME"

There are sound wave recordings that do something similar too. They sound like muffled new age music. Check Amazon for examples of Alpha, (Beta? Gamma? can't remember), Theta, Delta, etc... brainwave sync music (I avoid the subliminal ones, but YMMV). The delta ones really help me sleep, I need to focus on something because if I lay down in a quiet room, I will focus on how awful my body feels. Thank you for the links, very interesting.

 

[Empty]

I use Gamma.
Matthieu Ricard, long term meditator and compassion expert, is dubbed the happiest man in the world after his brain was scanned (nice label).

 

[Hip]

She decided to use a flashing light to aim to restore the rhythms — an idea she says she got after seeing research from the late 1980s in cats. And sure enough, by rigging LED lights to flash at the gamma frequency — 40 times per second — her team found gamma rhythms were restored in the brains of mice.

Very interesting.

A stroboscope (flashing light) capable of providing 40 flashes per second would cost around $100 or more (you can buy cheap discotheque strobes for less than $20, but these typically only go up to around 10 flashes per second, which is not fast enough to get into the gamma wave region which is typically at 40 Hz).

An alternative might be to use binaural sounds at 40 Hz, as these are similarly effective in brainwave entrainment.

A 40 Hz gamma wave binaural sound track is available on YouTube (note that binaural sounds only work if you listen to them through headphones or earphones; they will not work if you listen through speakers).

There are also 60 Hz and 70 Hz gamma wave binaural sounds (the brain's gamma waves go up to around 100 Hz).