NeuroFeedback, NeurOptimal and Electroencephalography

[daddycat]

For those who are interested to get a second hand neuroptimal device, I sell mine.
It's the unlimited version: NeurOptimal® Unlimited Bundle - NeurOptimal

The license transfer + administrative fees + laptop replacement are roughly 2000€, taken by Zengar.

They say the laptop replacement is necessary because the sessions will no more be run under Windows 10 (there is no date but it will be soon, they say). So you'll need to replace the laptop with a one being configutared with windows 11, for 1345€ (it's the cost of the new W11 laptop) ... Business, I assume.
Then, I don't know how many years you'll be able to use the W11 version before you'll be obliged to pay them the W12 version.

I had decided not to go forward with the purchase, due to the high costs.

 

[Persej]

From the book "The Ghost in My Brain":

It is no coincidence that I have not updated these notes in more than two weeks. My inner dialogue has considerably slowed down. Along with the slowdown, I am much more comfortable letting things go. In this case, I have let the notes go.

What I notice is a peacefulness in all my muscles, as though I had just taken two Ibuprofen and had a glass of wine. I am able to just sit and look at people, at situations, at the world, in real time, without continually thinking about everything, and talking it over in my head. I can’t ever recall such an extended period of internal quiet like this in my life.

After several weeks I began to experience a Zen-like calming of the inner dialogue I had been listening to in my head since my earliest memories of childhood.

(...)

I continue to have a Zen-like absence of inner dialogue. I am very alert. When I need to start my mind for something, I do. I estimate that my ongoing inner dialogue is 1/5th of what it has been my whole life. There is much less use of my mind’s eye for visualizing, ruminating, worrying, judging, seeing future outcomes, etc., all the time.

(...)

My reading has changed. I usually do not read particularly fast (~350 words a minute), and tend to hear the words in my head—though my reading pace is two or three times that of my speech. In the past, to speed-read—which I’ve several times studied recreationally—I have to work at “getting over the hump,” where I just put the words in front of my eyes and see the images they generate. It always takes days of work, and I never have gotten to where it becomes automatic; I have always had to keep pushing myself.

Now I notice myself almost naturally speeding through passages without the aural accompaniment of the words, as though I am simply gracefully floating into speed-reading. Intuitively, this is connected with a lessening of the constant dialogue—chatter—in my head that has previously always attended my normal activities during the day.

(...)

I continue to feel the loss of my “magic glasses.”
My reading has changed back. I am hearing the words in my head as I read and this slows me down and reduces comprehension. It is less fun to read, more work.

So wearing those glasses has helped him to reduce inner dialogue and increase the reading speed. I wonder if it is possible to create some kind of universal glasses that would have the same effect on everyone.

 

[Persej]

The present study provides novel empirical support for what poets and philosophers have long intimated: the images we hold in our mind’s eye can profoundly move our heart. When it comes to romantic love and desire, visualizing a cherished moment or a loved one’s face is not a trivial mental exercise—it recruits visual brain networks, commands attention and emotional processing resources, and engages our autonomic nervous system in concert. For those blessed with a vivid imagination, the act of imagining can evoke authentic feelings of warmth and longing, complete with a racing heartbeat and mind aglow with emotion. For those without a mind’s eye, the same act may fall flat, more cognitively understood than viscerally felt. These differences underscore the fundamental role of mental imagery in emotional life. By integrating cognitive neuroscience measures—ERPs, EEG oscillations, and heart rhythm dynamics—we showed that mental imagery ability is a decisive factor in how strongly one connects with imagined emotional scenarios. Our findings bridge the gap between the neural substrate of imagery and the lived experience of emotion, suggesting that the vividness of our inner images can shape the intensity of our love and desire. This work invites a deeper appreciation of individual differences in cognition: it reminds us that not everyone’s inner experiences are the same, and these differences can have real consequences for emotion and behavior. Future research can build on this foundation to further unravel how the mind’s eye fosters the heart’s emotions, ultimately enriching our understanding of imagination, love, and the human emotional experience.

The heart’s eye: how mental imagery influences romantic emotion - PMC

While mental imagery—the capacity to generate perceptual-like experiences in the absence of external stimuli—has been studied in fear and other domains, its influence in romantic emotional experiences has not been directly examined. Based on this ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

What This Might Mean

If the results match the predictions, it suggests that aphantasia isn't just a "difference in thinking," but has a specific chemical footprint in the brain. This is exciting because it could lead to ways to help people "turn up the brightness" on their mental imagery.
A note of caution: This study is only looking at men and uses a temporary chemical change. We can't say for sure if this explains *all* types of aphantasia yet, but it’s a huge step toward solving the mystery.

One Interesting Detail

The researchers are also looking at DNA! They are checking specific genes (like one called *DAT1*) to see if some people are naturally born with a "dimmer" mind's eye because of how their body is built to handle dopamine.

The role of dopamine in visual imagery—An experimental pharmacological study

Researchers are investigating whether acute dopamine depletion reduces the strength of voluntary mental imagery. This could identify a neurochemical mechanism for aphantasia and suggest potential pharmacological interventions to enhance imagery.

aphantasia.com

The role of dopamine in visual working memory (WM) functions is not fully understood. We investigated the effects of dopaminergic drugs on precision of WM recall in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and healthy people. In PD patients, we examined precision of memory on a serial order task, in which participants observed four differently coloured oriented bars presented sequentially, one at a time at screen centre. Afterwards, they were asked to adjust a coloured probe bar’s orientation to match the orientation of the bar with the same colour in the sequence. We quantified precision as the reciprocal of the standard deviation of error in response orientation. The results show a deficit in WM precision in drug-naïve PD patients compared to age-matched controls. But this deficit was restored back to normal within 2-3 months of being treated with a regular daily dopamine agonist medication. Sensorimotor control tasks showed no change in performance pre- and post-medication, and compared to age-matched controls. We next investigated the effect of a single dose (1.5 mg) of cabergoline, a dopamine agonist, and placebo in healthy young participants performing the same WM task. The results showed that the effect of cabergoline on performance was dependent on participants’ baseline performance. While high baseline performers were impaired with cabergoline, those with low baseline performance improved on the drug. There was a negative correlation between improvement in precision on medication and baseline performance. These findings demonstrate that dopaminergic stimulation can improve WM precision in PD patients and healthy low performing individuals. Conversely, it can impair performance in healthy high performers, consistent with the view that there might be an inverted U-shaped function relating dopaminergic dose to optimal WM precision.

https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2140997

What is missing is a study where the reverse would be tested, that is, if visual training, like when reading novels, would have an influence on dopamine neurons in the brain. We already know that mental activities can stimulate neurochemical production, but what is missing is the knowledge about which activity stimulates what.

 

[Persej]

In the past ten years, retinal research has shown that there are many other non-image-forming pathways from the retina to various body systems. These channels affect the “homeodynamics” (dynamic self-organization) of the body—through hormones, enzymes, and other mechanisms. For example, there are receptors linked with thyroid function, pupil dilation and constriction, dopamine production, and adrenaline production.

The Ghost in My Brain

Perhaps one of those non-image-forming pathways which are stimulated with prism glasses are connected to cryptochromes?

Magnetoreception of the light-dependent magnetic compass in birds is suggested to be mediated by a radical-pair mechanism taking place in the avian retina. Biophysical models on magnetic field effects on radical pairs generally assume that the light activating the magnetoreceptor molecules is nondirectional and unpolarized, and that light absorption is isotropic. However, natural skylight enters the avian retina unidirectionally, through the cornea and the lens, and is often partially polarized. In addition, cryptochromes, the putative magnetoreceptor molecules, absorb light anisotropically, i.e., they preferentially absorb light of a specific direction and polarization, implying that the light-dependent magnetic compass is intrinsically polarization sensitive. To test putative interactions between the avian magnetic compass and polarized light, we developed a spatial orientation assay and trained zebra finches to magnetic and/or overhead polarized light cues in a four-arm “plus” maze. The birds did not use overhead polarized light near the zenith for sky compass orientation. Instead, overhead polarized light modulated light-dependent magnetic compass orientation, i.e., how the birds perceive the magnetic field. Birds were well oriented when tested with the polarized light axis aligned parallel to the magnetic field. When the polarized light axis was aligned perpendicular to the magnetic field, the birds became disoriented. These findings are the first behavioral evidence to our knowledge for a direct interaction between polarized light and the light-dependent magnetic compass in an animal. They reveal a fundamentally new property of the radical pair-based magnetoreceptor with key implications for how birds and other animals perceive the Earth’s magnetic field.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1513391113

Humans are not believed to have a magnetic sense, even though many animals use the Earth's magnetic field for orientation and navigation. One model of magnetosensing in animals proposes that geomagnetic fields are perceived by light-sensitive chemical reactions involving the flavoprotein cryptochrome (CRY). Here we show using a transgenic approach that human CRY2, which is heavily expressed in the retina, can function as a magnetosensor in the magnetoreception system of Drosophila and that it does so in a light-dependent manner. The results show that human CRY2 has the molecular capability to function as a light-sensitive magnetosensor and reopen an area of sensory biology that is ready for further exploration in humans.

Human cryptochrome exhibits light-dependent magnetosensitivity - Nature Communications

In animals, cryptochrome proteins are thought to be the detectors of the Earth's magnetic field, but humans have not been shown to posess mangetosensing capabilities. Foleyet al. demonstrate that the human cryptochrome protein, CRY2, when expressed in Drosophila melanogastercan mediate...

www.nature.com

Like many animals, humans are sensitive to the polarization of light. We developed a novel methodology for presenting gratings in polarization-only contrast at varying degrees of polarization in order to measure the lower limits of human polarized light detection. Participants were, on average, able to perform the task down to a threshold of 56%, with some able to go as low as 23%. This makes humans the most sensitive vertebrate tested to date.

Perceiving polarization with the naked eye: characterization of human polarization sensitivity - PMC

Like many animals, humans are sensitive to the polarization of light. We can detect the angle of polarization using an entoptic phenomenon called Haidinger's brushes, which is mediated by dichroic carotenoids in the macula lutea. While previous ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov