BRAIN WAVES

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 February 1928, Page 9

BRAIN WAVES

DO SUCH THINGS EXIST? Waves of one kind or another, emanating from the brain, have been discovered more than once; but they do not stay discovered. Such waves would possess great importance as a possible physical basis for telepathy. The most celebrated were probably the “N-rays” reported from a Paris laboratory a quarter of a century ago. Though sponsored by some, eminent men of science, repeated investigation failed to reproduce them elsewhere, and they are now generally consigned to the realpi of the imagination. The latest work in this direction is that of Dr. Ferdinando Cazzama'lli of the University of Milan, Italy, who two years ago reported the discovery of electric waves like radio waves, emanating from the living human brain. He has now published a preliminary report of further experiments tending to establish this remarkable conclusion. Says Dr. E. E. Free in his “Week’s Science” (New York): “Dr. Cazzamalli’s method is to place a human subject and a sensitive radio receiving-set inside a metallic cage, this cage being necessary in order to shield the apparatus from stray radio waves or other disturbances originating at nearby radio stations or elsewhere. The human subject used is ordinarily a ‘psychic’ one; that is a person subject to trances like those of mediums or to mental disturbances, like hysteria. During such psychic happenings curious signals, not otherwise explainable, are detected in the radio receiver. One instance, now reported, is a signal perceived when a trance medium inside the cage experienced what the experts in psychic research call ‘crypthesthesia,’ which is 'the perception otherwise than through normal touch or sight of the nature of an article concealed by wrappings. Another instance was a radio signal perceived when a hypnotised subject was made to recall mental images of dead relatives. Dr Cazzamalli believes that his experiments- prove the emission from the brain of electric impulses of some kind. These must be taken into account, he maintains, in theories of mental action. Although experts elsewhere in the world were fully respectful of Dr.. Cazzamalli’s previous experiments, many of them dissented from his conclusions. In the present communication tjic Italian savant answers some of these previous criticisms, making what must be admitted to be a good case for the correctness of his view-point.”