Effects of 6-10 Hz ELF on Brain Waves

An article by David S. Walonick published in a 1999 issue of the Borderlands Research Journal details an experiment examining the effects of ELF using 1980’s era EEG/EMG sensors and ELF field generators.

“Each ELF exposure consisted of a ten second, sine-wave transmission separated from one another by 45 – 60 seconds of no exposure. The voltage fed to the coil was 3.1 VAC (RMS). The coil was positioned 18″ in front of the subjects head. The outputs from the ELF transmitter (function generator) and the brain wave monitor were fed directly into the computer A to D board, allowing both to be displayed on the computer monitor (and recorded on disk) simultaneously. The sampling rate of the A to D converter was set at 2000 samples per second for the entire experiment. This was sufficient to visually detect differences of .1 Hertz between the ELF and brain wave frequencies. Subjects were not told when a transmission was beginning. However, at the end of each transmission, they were asked to “report”. This was their current relaxation level based on the zero to ten scale. They also reported any feelings they had experienced and these were recorded verbatim. Twenty-one frequencies were presented to each subject (from 6 to 10 Hertz in increments of .2 Hertz. For half the subjects, these frequencies were randomly selected. For the other subjects, they began at 10 Hertz and were decreased by .2 Hertz with each transmission. Subjects were not told the order of frequencies that would be presented to them.

Post acquisition software was used to visually examine the coherence (frequencies) and synchronously (phase relationship) between the transmitted ELF and prominent brain waves.”

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