DocM
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Actually, I am surprised that Dude gave the answer he did (because I didn't think you had that much familiarity with TMI), but I have to say, I've examined the issue thoroughly and I agree with him and came to the same conclusions. Before going into detail, I should say that despite the shortcoming in terms of true reproducible peer reviewed research, TMI has done more in terms of exploration and preliminary work, than anyone I know of in the modern world.
As someone trained in science, the first thing I did a few years ago, was to pore over the entire medical literature about hemi-sync and go through all published studies I could find. Thanks to computers, you can now do this with ease by going to pubmed.com and then typing in search terms. The articles listed encompass the entire medical literature going back to the 1960s.
What I found, was a beginning, but was, to me disappointing. The theory behind hemisync was fascinating and made a lot of sense. If yogis and mystics exhibit an alpha wave pattern in the brain when deep in meditation, and those who have OOB and astral travels get into the theta range, what will happen if we induce the alpha state with musical tones? Take a tone at 330 HZ in one ear, and another with 310 HZ in the other. It can be shown that the difference between the two - 10HZ is "heard by the brain as a third tone (a summation). If brainwaves are produced on an EEG in the 10 HZ range (approximately the alpha range), then you have, by tones alone, pushed the brain toward wavelengths that a master yogi may take years to get to with only a few minutes of tones heard over headphones. Awesome.
Then comes the next step - one that the good people at TMI excelled, and that is reporting experiences. This was the phase where RM reported which tones and brainwaves seemed to correspond to which focus levels he found.
This is also the phase in which TMI explorers reported good but anecdotal experience. If someone with the fibromyalgia syndrome felt better after listening to theta waves, this was noted. If kids with ADD were able to concentrate better at a different frequency, this was noted. However, rather than have different centers conduct blinded studies (as is usual with most science), followups simply were not done. So what you are left with is a great, wonderful theory, and then personal experiences written down, without the true testing of science (different unrelated centers testing hemisync for all of its possibilities, both travel and healing in a double blinded, placebo controlled fashion).
Now I must state that I am impressed that TMI did all that it did with tones and exploration no matter what. But what followed, amounted to weak science. Hemisync products were released claiming - this CD is useful for learning; another CD was useful for healing. They were based on theory and anecdote. You can find them on TMIs site available right now. Yet, this is where they lose me, as a scientist, and where they lose, unfortunately some authenticity.
If you want to show that a certain hemisync frequency is good at healing, then take 100 injured patients, expose 50 to the hemisync, then go through the statistics and report the outcomes (in a scientific journal). If delta patterns is associated with the release human growth hormone and this release is associated with certain types of healing, you really need to have double blinded studies to prove the theory - that delta frequencies may heal certain illnesses.
So I think that there is so much real science that can still be done to show the true effect of hemisync. If some of it works in a reproducible fashion for certain diseases - this would be great. If not, we have to acknowledge that too.
With regard to the reproducibility of focus levels with Hemisync, I have to say that the anecdotal work written down by TMI IS IMPORTANT, because consciousness is subjective. Yet it too can be subjected to double blinded studies, using different frequencies and getting volunteers to record their impressions.
So, what TMI did was groundbreaking, and a great start, but then it got to the wonderful steps from theory to observation/anecdotes, but skipped the final step of double blinded studies to get to the final stage of scientific proof.
Matthew
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