40 Hertz

[Mark Elliott]

> Ken Martens <martensk at cadvision.com> wrote:
> > An earlier posting indicated that "consciousness naturally occurs at 40
> > hertz."  I am a layman in this area but I recall some reference to
> > consciousness occurring at 20 (not 40) hertz.  I don't really know what
> > it means for consciousness to "occur" at 40 or at 20 hertz.
>
> > Are there any studies/references that anyone could direct me to so that
> > I would have a better understanding of the topic?
>

Hi,

also see my work

Elliott, M. A. & Mueller, H. J. (1998). Synchronous information presented in
40-Hz flicker enhances visual feature binding, Psychological Science (9) pp
277-283.

In this article we show (i) 40-Hz has implications for basic figure-ground
segmentation, (ii) that it does not require the involvement of 'conscious
perception' of information presented at 40-Hz to achieve this and (iii) that
it does not 'necessarily' involve the engagement of attentional mechanisms
(although and as Dag Stenberg points out this does not mean that this rhythm
is not 'related to them')..



Mark

________________________________________________________________________

Mark Elliott

Universität Leipzig.
Institut für Allgemeine Psychologie.
Seeburgstr. 14/20,
D-04103 Leipzig.
Germany

Tel: ++49 (0)341 97-35957

email:
elliott at uni-leipzig.de
m.elliott at psyc.bbk.ac.uk
________________________________________________________________________