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comment by kleinbl00

This is a vagal nerve stimulator.

It can be used to treat depression.

Note that not only does it look very little like headphones, but that it looks suspiciously like something involving a general anesthetic and some sharp, skilled bladework.

These are Nervana headphones.

Although you could probably invoke a sharp knife and a general anesthetic, the results are not likely to be FDA-approved.

Long has there been a pervasive myth that the vagus nerve can be stimulated through binaural beats.

I'm not entirely up on the whole shitshow. WORTHY OF NOTE - a lot of my music sounds like weird-ass binaural beats stuff. And while it certainly affects my mood, so does all music.

I certainly wouldn't ascribe any clinical effects to Tom Heasley.





OftenBen  ·  3001 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Man, I should get an extra lead placed on my vagus nerve. I've already got the generator.

thenewgreen  ·  3001 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Ha! Funny stuff. Time to leverage that contraption of yours.

arguewithatree  ·  3001 days ago  ·  link  ·  

oh man i remember trying to get binaural beats to work in high school. i only owned shitty headphones so i assumed that's why it failed and i just wound up sitting in the dark listening to reverberations for an hour. there's one floating around that supposedly is supposed to make you go insane but i was too chicken to try it...

user-inactivated  ·  3001 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Infrasound can supposedly have funny effects on people.

I've heard stories about Throbbing Gristle trying to play the brown note, but I don't think that's a real thing.

kleinbl00  ·  3001 days ago  ·  link  ·  

True dat.

The problem with infrasound is it requires a shit-ton of energy consumed by transducers you've never met. an 18" JBL woofer can suck down a thousand watts and roll off 12dB at 18Hz. 9Hz is effectively out of reach for all but the most die-hard tweakers. I'd characterize G-ennesis and crew as punters.

I once read a semi-credible account of infrasonic weapons deployed by the US Army in Somalia (Scientific American) but I haven't seen anything in 15 years and there aren't many credible sources on the Internet these days. Thing is, the amount of energy you need to burn in order to create infrasound, you could pretty much tase a herd of cattle quieter, more effectively and over a greater range.