VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY - VIA THE HUMAN BRAIN 

We have learned more about the human brain during the past ten years than in all man's previous history.

The CAT scan, which is now in almost all major hospitals, can determine if the cranium is cracked and the brain itself, is otherwise damaged. The MRI, or Magnetic Resonance Imager can "see" the white and grey matter of the brain and its condition. The PET, or Positron Emission Tomographic scanner shows how different parts of the brain are using energy and "lights up" when we think "work" rather than "play". With this development they can now see "where" we think.

Another giant step, the Quantified Signal Imager has recently been developed. The QSI is a greatly advanced form of EEG or Electroencephelogram, which, in its basic form, has been around since the 1920s, and is a device used to measure electrical activity in the brain.

The original EEG generated a graph that plotted different electrical activity in various parts of the brain. Such graphs were and still are, used by neurologists and psychiatrists to help diagnose and locate such brain-related ailments, as tumors, strokes, epilepsy, and brain damage from head injury. The art of this science exists in the interpretation of the squiggly dark lines traced by the machine on rolls of white paper. Reading the results created a whole new discipline. Although more than a million EEG's are recorded annually in North America only a small number of really specialized individuals are totally competent in this field. Such readings are highly subjective and depend on complex pattern perception.

With the QSI, that world has changed. The marriage of the latest computer technology with the QSI machine will allow a vastly wider group of physicians and psychiatrists to correctly and consistently analyse EEG data.

The QSI 9000 "might do for brain science what the calculator has done for math students" says news commentator Dal Neitzel.

With the QSI scanner the large amount of physical space, vast sums of money, considerable setup and operational time and large staffs of skilled technicians required for the PET scanner are no longer necessary. And gone is the physical risk which accompanied the injections of radioactive isotopes necessary for the PET analysis. The new QSI electrodiagnostic device is harmless, fast and inexpensive.

The new procedure takes less than an hour and can be conducted in any office setting. Subject or patient is connected to the QSI 9000 with a complex of wires attached at precise points corresponding to various brain positions. As time progresses the wires will likely be packaged into a helmet that will simplify the procedure. The contact points relay information about brain electrical activity to the system which charts and records exactly where and when such activity is taking place. When I underwent such procedures recently in Toronto at the office and research facilities of the QSI Corporation, they asked me to perform simple and specific mental exercises while hooked up to the new device. I was asked to start with the number 5000 and subtract the number 7, then 6, then 5, etc. and continue until I was told to stop. Then I was told to visually drive from West Vancouver to my houseboat in downtown Vancouver with my eyes closed - to do everything in my mind that I would do in making the actual trip by car. Then I was told to return doing similar visualization with my eyes open. A tremendous amount of data was obtained by the QSI machine during these "trips".

After my six-hour "research" was completed, the Research Director Dr. Herb Kaye, was able to manipulate such data via the machine into a series of "brain maps" which showed in picture form what I had been thinking. Through his interpretive skills the collected data in the computer was massaged into other "mind maps", which illustrate thought patterns. They can now see "what" we think. Together with the CAT, MRI and PET scanners I now have my "brain atlas" (In the future this will be more in demand by business than a print record of your education and work experience, which we all know can be fudged. This can't).

Such maps disclose how hard the brain is working for any specific project and the amount and precise location of electrical activity. For example during the spatiel visualization (driving) exercise other parts of my brain was in gear, while during the verbal exercise other parts of my brain were chattering. Any brain disorder, tumor, or other damage would have shown up in various maps as they were created.

The implications of such a technological advance as the QSI are not yet known, but they could be tremendous. Researchers will now be able to answer questions about our "inner space" that have been unknown or only suspected for many years. Because of the relative simplicity of the procedure the mystery and expense are drastically reduced and the QSI will eventually be available for every hospital and even for the private offices of progressive physicians.

Neuropsychologist Dr. Gerri Schwartz, president of the Vancouver Learning Centre, told me that in addition to the medical possibilities outlined above she would be interested in knowing the effect of intervention procedures on the brains of people who suffer from learning disabilities, minimal brain function, brain injury and strokes. In other words, what happens when treatments and techniques are used to improve such conditions? Is the right approach that which is being used based on just what we knew about the brain in the past? Interesting questions can be studied more efficiently than in the past.

QSI research and diagnosis may be only the beginning, restricted in the immediate future as it applies to medicine and brain research. What about the application of the QSI to such highly speculative fields as:

Psychic phenomena, mental telepathy, telekinesis, neural linguistic programming and creativity? Not to mention the potential for career programming, marital compatibility, analysis of the apparently incredible mental activity in what was previously known as "idiot savants" (such as the character Dustin Hoffman played in "Rainman"), or even the possibility of being able to adjust human longevity?

If, as claimed recently by American scientific researchers, at Harvard, Maryland and Stanford, trancendental meditation or TM, can lengthen life span, think of the potential if you could watch, and learn to control, the electronic feedback of such mental visualization via the QSI machine! Back in the 1970s, I was impressed with the feedback I was able to observe from Father Abraham, an extremely respected voodoo priest, utilizing the rustic bio-feedback equipment then available. It is certainly comparable to that verified some years later by the Menninger Foundation in Kansas City during their work with Indian "fakirs", who were able to control such bodily functions as heart beat, pulse rate and sensitivity to pain via mental activity alone.

For those interested in unconventional pathways, the future, as seen through such technological advances as the QSI 9000 will either make such analyses more acceptable to both the scientific and general public or prove definitely what mental activity does or does not originate within the human brain

More information: Dr. Herbert Kaye, Scientific Director, QSI, Inc., 290 Yorkland Blvd., Toronto, Ont. M2J 1R5. Phone: 416/496-0808. Fax: 416/496-8857.

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