IN some ways,MEG is teh klukiest looking of them all. It's super-conducting magnets next the scalp (like EEG but with magnets instead of electrodes).
The crazy looking thing on top is the liquid-nitrogen refrigerator that keeps the magnets cold. Machines like that are super expensive, but can detect tiny magnetic fluctuations of the brain that last about 1/1000 of a second. In some ways they're more accurate than EEG, but they can only deal with magnetic fields towards the surface of the brain, so you can't even get a fuzzy idea of what is going on further in, like you can sorta get with the electric currents that EEG detects. I'd love to see MUM get one, but the initial cost is about $3 million, plus another $100K/year upkeep, at least, and you need a specialized magnetically shielded room + extremely stable power source. In other words, you'd need to spend as much as the entire MUM Student Center cost to install one. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/NIMH_MEG.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/NIMH_MEG.jpg ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote : thanks for the info, Lawson. I've never heard of MEG before. And I admit, all these machines seem kind of clunky but if they help us see the brain better, great. How best can the knower know itself? On Monday, April 14, 2014 4:13 AM, "LEnglish5@..." <LEnglish5@...> wrote: Ny money is on sophisticated analysis of high resolution EEG and MEG. fMRI is pretty low-resolution, time-wise, and the interesting stuff can happen in way under a second, which is the ilmitation of all the popular direct brain imaging stuff. Lawson ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote : Thanks, Lawson. I think it'll be so much fun when we can see all these abstract states, such as absolute faith, right there in the fMRI. On Saturday, April 12, 2014 4:07 PM, "LEnglish5@..." <LEnglish5@...> wrote: IF you have absolute faith in samadhi, that is, if your samadhi is unshakable, regardless of circumstances, then the ability to float might manifest. And placebo might be related to that in some way as there are overlaps in which brain circuits are activated during placebo effects and during the practice of the TM-Sidhis.. There are also overlaps in the brain circuits that activate during pure consciousness and during mind-wandering, so placebo being related to siddhis practice is like saying that pure consciousness is related to mind wandering. Or something. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote : Lawson, thanks for the additional definitions of shraddha. Could you say more about your last two sentences? I'm missing your main point somehow. On Saturday, April 12, 2014 5:12 AM, "LEnglish5@..." <LEnglish5@...> wrote: "If you had the faith of a mustard seed, you could move mountains." shraddhaa is translated as "Faith" which can mean trust, or belief without proof. The Hebrew word translated as "faith" means something along the lines of "strong [in God]" and the Greed word means something like "intuitive knowledge." "Grok" in the original sense of the Martian word for "drink" seems to contain a bit of the same feel. In the context of the siddhis, how about "absolute stability" of samadhi? The placebo effect might be related to that, in the same way that mind-wandering is related to pure consciousness. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <cardemaister@...> wrote : They might be called to be based on placebo, because, IMU, faith (shraddhaa) is the conditio sine qua non of samaadhi. As an analogy, I'll try to explain in English, how I seem to recall to have learned to bike (at about 7 years of age). It might have been the very first time I ever tried to ride a bike. It was a women's bike, the one of the mother of a friend of mine. I just started to ride and kept on, believing, that a couple of other boys were keeping the bike upright. As a stopped, I noticed they were about 30 yards behind me! So I learned to bike because I, falsely, believed I couldn't fall (because I believed the other boys were running behind me keeping the bike upright)! So, in a sense my belief was the placebo that instantaneosly helped me to learn to ride a bike?? Wikipedia: Placebo effect and the brain Functional imaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_imaging upon placebo analgesia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analgesia shows that it links to the activation, and increased functional correlation between this activation, in the anterior cingulate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterior_cingulate, prefrontal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefrontal_cortex, orbitofrontal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbitofrontal_cortex and insular http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_cortex cortices, nucleus accumbens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleus_accumbens, amygdala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala, the brainstem periaqueductal gray matter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periaqueductal_gray_matter,[84] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#cite_note-84[85] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#cite_note-Scott-85[86] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#cite_note-86 and the spinal cord http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_cord.[87] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#cite_note-autogenerated2007-87[88] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#cite_note-88[89] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#cite_note-89[90] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#cite_note-90
