Prolonged exposure to strobe lights has a psychedelic effect, which researchers are investigating as a way to heal the brain.
LAST SUMMER, IN various cities in the UK, more than 40,000 people visited the Dreamachine, a large space designed to induce hallucinatory experiences with white stroboscopic light and electronic music. Twenty to 30 people were allowed into the room and asked to lay down and close their eyes. After the 30-minute session, participants would typically describe the experience with adjectives like vivid, kaleidoscopic, powerful, and magic.
One of the aims of the Dreamachine project is to shine a light on something that Anil Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex and a collaborator on the project, which includes a team of artists, engineers, designers, and musicians, have investigated for more than a decade: the effect of stroboscopic lights on the brain. “It’s a phenomenon that’s still not understood,” he says. “The flickering light gives rise to really unexpected and powerful perceptual effects and conscious experiences that are kind of unrelated to what’s out there. It’s just white light yet people see colors and shapes.” This psychedelic effect might be key to understanding the neural basis of visual experience, because participants report having visual experiences even though their eyes are closed. “There’s something about experiencing the power of your own mind and brain to generate an experience that is really transformational,” Seth says.
Seth and his team have also started a project called the Perception Census, an online survey that aims to measure how different people perceive different dimensions like sound, time, color, and even expectations. “The idea is to understand the latent space,” he says. “The underlying organizational structure by which we all vary on the inside because it’s so hard to see. It seems to us that we see the world as it is, so it’s very hard to realize that other people might see it very differently.” Already, 20,000 people from more than 100 countries have taken part in the census, making it one of the largest experiments of its kind.
Editor’s Note:
You can have this kind of experience at Lumonics with your eyes open as you look at colorful light sculptures and experience visual music. Here is a link to Therapeutic Potential of Lumonics.
https://www.wired.com/story/dreamachine-anil-seth-strobe-light-therapy
