Electricity Can Make You See Hovering Shapes—And Drugs Can Help

There is a term for the fiddling glowing shapes that temporarily come along when you rub your eyes or bang your head – phosphenes . In the 1930s , a German scientist find ways to make them appear via the manipulation of electricity , and later the use of drugs .

Phosphenes can be because of all kinds of things . The elementary I are the little points of luminance that come along whenever you scratch your eyes . Things get a picayune more complex when you take a collision to the head . Smacks to the ocular cortex tend to lead in people “ figure stars . ”

In the 1930s , one scientist found a more authentic , and less bruising , way to raise phosphenes . An electric applied scientist by training , he found he could practice electromagnetic moving ridge to stimulate the brain . By varying the frequency of the waves by less than ten percent he found he could get a “ bang-up number ” of forms .

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Eventually , he come up withfifteen unlike shapesthat most hoi polloi were likely to see . They could be variations on orbitual shapes , like radials , concentric round , or spirals . They could also line arranged in patterns like lattices , waves , and pole . ( Personally I think he ’s being too vague when he flummox to the 8th group , which he just assort as “ odd figures . ” )

Soon electrical stimulation was n’t enough , and Knoll determine to give his observational subjectsLSD , psilocin , and mescaline . The drugs , Knoll discovered , increased the number of phosphenes make by electric stimulation , and made them more brilliant , but did n’t alter the shapes .

Many people , look at Knoll ’s work , notice a similarity between the phosphenes andcave art . Could ancient citizenry have bring phosphenes as divine guidance for their more abstract work ? Or were they actually chronicle what they saw , the same way they chronicled birds and ruminants ? What do you imagine ?

Dji Drone