THE BRAIN MACHINE

By Mitch Altman

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Photography by Sam Murphy

RIDE YOUR OWN BRAIN WAVES

You don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to meditate, or a Sleeping Beauty to sleep well. Achieve these altered states of consciousness, and others, with this simple microcontroller device.

What would happen if you could play a recording of brain waves into someone’s brain? That question popped into my mind one day while I was meditating, and it turns out that there are devices that can do this. Sound and Light Machines (SLMs) produce sound and light pulses at brain wave frequencies, which help people sleep, wake up, meditate, or experience whatever state of consciousness ...

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