LAMP LIT BY THOUGHT

Feilding Star, Volume 8, Issue 2559, 16 April 1930, Page 3

LAMP LIT BY THOUGHT

DOCTOR’S CLAIM MEASURING J3KAIN WAVES ' Iu an effort to bridge 1 i l e gap between mind and matter, Dr. Edmund Jacobson, of tlio University of Ohica- | go, has bet fci making interesting ex- ' perunents, and reports to-day that 2. 000,QU0 people, Jinked together in mental reaction to the same idea, will generate enough voltage to light an ordinary incandescent lamp. Apparently he has gone a step farther than the late Dr Hoppolytd lfaraduc, tUfc eminent French scientist whose invention of the biometre for recording the “vital current” in human doings is known to advanced students of psychology. Dr Jacobson has devised a string galvanometer, :m instrument so sensitive that it will detect one-millionth of a volt of electricity. He is using it in expiSimcnts which tend to prove that mental activity and the imagination are functions involving the whole body rather than brain action atone. ACTION IN THOUGHT Dr Jacobson proceeds on the theory that in the merest of idtus there is neuro-muscular action, capable of being measured iu the amount of voltage produced. Electrodes, capable of detecting the slightest change in the electrical potential accompanying any muscular tension, are sealed to the , subject’s right biceps, forming a connection with fl le galvanometer. On the galvanometer is a quartz string one-hundredth thousandth of an inch thick. Each subject in the recent test agredd to imagine, at a prearranged signal, that ho was flexing his arm; | two-filths of a second later a motionpiefuro camera recurded flic vibra- j tion of the quartz string’ silhouette. ! The subj.lct was given a signal fo ; stop imagining; a fraction of a second later tlio shadow of the quartz string lapsed to tUc straight line of quieseennee. One of Dr Jacobson’s subjects, a j woman, reports that shj was even < able tu sec and hear herself think by watching the dancing silhouette and listening through a stethoscope con- i iiectdd witJhi an amplifier.