All Seeing “Eye”: Proprioceptors as Electrodes that Pick Up Brainwaves

All Seeing “Eye”: Proprioceptors as Electrodes that Pick Up Brainwaves

Yesterday, in looking for a back cover for my chapbook, I decided to choose the Eye of Horus (Eye of Ra) which is also known as the All Seeing Eye. This hieroglyphic represents knowledge, protection, and power. Interestingly enough, I found out through searching for pictures of it on Google that the Eye of Horus is a mathematical equation. Below is a picture:

The system of Horus Eye fractions[1]

This equation represents the six senses: Thought (1/8), Hearing (1/2), Sight (1/4), Smell (1/16), Touch (1/64), and Taste (1/32). These were fractions of a heqat, which was used to measure a whole grain of wheat. Also, the fractions were out of 64 and represented how much data or “food” (mouthful) required for each sense to receive an input and react to it. All data was considered “food.” So, respectively, Thought needed 40 ro (ro was a fraction of a heqat) before it responded to data (food), hearing needed 20 ro, sight needed 80 ro, touch needed 5 ro, and taste needed 10 ro.[2] What was interesting was that the numbers were not disconnected from one another: Touch was one of the most basic of all. Yet it had a partner. If one added up all of the fractions, it would only equal to 63/64. The other 1/64 represented something divine—the 7th sense that they could not reach. Thus 7 is the number of completion. Since the 7th sense was the most elusive, it was rounded out of the equation—suppressed.

All of this greatly intrigued me. In Neurobiology and behavior with Grobestein, he said that the neo-cortex (the place in the nervous system responsible for thinking) does not have any receptors to the outside world. I was told that all of its information is filtered through the body or the rest of the nervous system. Yet, by the Egyptians including thought as one of the senses, it insinuates that the neo-cortex does have receptors from which to gain knowledge. This is in contradiction to what I learned in class, which basically says that thought to thought communication has not been found to occur. But, because I try to integrate everything into one overarching (or basic) theory/ understanding, I don’t believe that these facts are necessarily contradictory. I believe that there is a way to understand how these ideas not only relate, but help explain one another.

For example, what if the proprioceptors could receive the tail end of the wave pattern created by a thought through that thought’s perturbation of matter and that’s matter’s perturbation of air? So, proprioceptors may not necessarily get the full intent, but latch on to its residual, which is something that could aid perception.

So this book review is in part a book review, but mostly is an investigation into how thought can be communicated. I hope to find out that thoughts are waves and those waves can form perturbation not only in matter that is received by the rest of the nervous system but also received through other people’s proprioceptors after that thought-perturbation in matter perturbed the air. Let the exploration begin…

Neurofeedback

In looking for a book that matched my inquiry, I typed in the query: thought wave. That did not produce much result. I tried brainwave next on Tripod. There I found this book called A Symphony in the Brain by Jim Robbins. It deals with his experiences and investigation into neurofeedback or brainwave biofeedback. He defines it as

The simple science of quantifying the subtle electrical information from a person’s brain, amplifying it, and sharing it with that person, who can then control the information in a way that makes the brain more vigorous and able to do a better job of managing body and mind.[3]

The brainwaves are received through electrodes which are a conductor used to establish electrical contact with a nonmetallic part of a circuit.[4] (Well, we learned that the human nervous system is an electrical circuit) This made me begin to wonder if proprioceptors can me thought of as electrodes built into our bodies. As soon as I thought that I read a passage in the book that talked about the electrical nature of human tissue.[5] In class, proprioceptors are located in the skin, joints, and muscle tissue. Thus, I believe this could potentially be evidence to my notion of proprioceptors as electrodes. The next portion of my theory is also covered: thought as waves. I learned in the book that brain activity can travel as waves of electricity and that included thought.

This book was illuminating and interesting in many respects. It talked about how biofeedback can enhance coordination, awareness of oneself, alleviate disorders such as epilepsy, ADHD, eating disorders, and phobias, and how it can be and is being used in therapy. However, for the purposes of this paper, I am only going to deal with the discussion about using the brain to control and affect objects. This is because it is directly related and can help explain telepathy (and psychokinesis). Because the book addresses many aspects of this, I will particularly address a game in the book that was created to receive information from brain (neo-cortex) activity.

Robbins describes a neurofeedback system called Extended Attention Span Training System. This system is a game that works as treatment for disorders such as ADHD, but they can also be used by anyone. The game is a car racing videogame where although the player controls the direction of the car with a joy stick, the acceleration is controlled by the brain.[6] So the stronger you are at controlling your electrical encephalogram, the faster you will accelerate. Robbins describes the electrical encephalogram (EEG) as the brain’s signature.[7] It is not necessarily how the brain travels, but it is a way to quantify and operationalize what is going on with the brain. An EEG is a measurement that tracks the intensity of the frequencies of brainwaves. It is particularly sensitive at detecting changes in breathing and oxygen, emotions, stress, and the like.

Relating back to my theory, could one’s proprioceptors function like a less sensitive EEG machine? Meaning could there be a proprioceptive gram? The way an EEG machine is described can be eerily similar to how we describe proprioceptors: Sensitive to electrical impulses, particularly in the form of changes in emotions, stress, and oxygen. Your skin turns blue with a lack of oxygen. Your joints can ache due to too much stress. Your muscles tense up due to various emotions.

Thus, if we can think about our proprioceptors like an EEG machine, then maybe we can pick up other people’s thoughts. If that is the case, then we pick up people’s brainwaves all of the time. Maybe because the brainwave frequency is subtle and not something we have learned to name or recognize, we ignore it.

So, I would conclude that there is great potential for my theory to be correct. Proprioceptors can pick up thoughts. We just have to (re)learn how to be sensitive to that input. So maybe thought is just food which can grow and exist organically and the sense or receptors of thought can be the proprioceptors. Maybe the Egyptians confused the data (thought) for the mechanism to pick up the data (proprioceptors). So this theory integrates both the ancient Egyptian understanding of thought as the sixth sense and what I learned about proprioceptors in Neurobiology and behavior by redefining what the Egyptians meant by thought to now mean thought as food and proprioceptors as the sense that picks it up. Thus telepathy is possible, just not in the way it is usually thought it to be.

References

Robbins, Jim. 2000. A Symphony in the Brain. Atlantic Monthly Press: New York.