In January 2018, the New Scientist reported ( paywalled article) that the same MIT team achieved even better results by playing mice a 40 Hz sound.In January 2017, Cognito Therapeutics, a company formed by some of the members of the MIT team, started conducting preliminary trials to assess the safety of exposing AD patients to simultaneous flickering lights, an audio tone, and vibrations – all at 40 hertz.It should be noted that the “dosage” of the treatment was rather low, which may explain the modest results. After six 30-minute sessions (done twice a week), the patients’ average score on the 30-point SLUMS scale improved by 4 points, while the placebo group did not improve. In March 2016, scientists at the University of Toronto published the results of a small, placebo-controlled pilot study ( paywalled paper), in which they exposed 20 Alzheimer’s patients to a 40 Hz sound.MIT also made a video about the findings. Here’s an accessibly written report in The Atlantic and here’s the original paper (published in Nature) if you’re strong in science-speak. An important qualification here is that the effect was limited to the visual cortex, which is not significantly affected in human Alzheimer’s patients. Flickering at 20 Hz and 80 Hz did not have the same effect. In 2016, MIT’s Alzheimer’s group did experiments on transgenic mice with early Alzheimer’s disease and found that exposing them to a light flickering at a frequency of 40 Hz (40 times a second) for 1 hour a day for 7 days causes an almost 60% reduction in β-amyloid plaques, which are a molecular hallmark of Alzheimer’s.In 1991, researchers from the NYU Medical Center discovered that Alzheimer’s patients have reduced 40 Hz brainwaves compared with healthy people.It has been known since at least the 1980s that cognitive activity triggers brainwaves (wave-like patterns of activation) at a frequency of 40 Hz in humans and other mammals.To date I have not gone public on this and only close family have known but by the end of another week when it will be 8 weeks since we started I think I would like to spread the word and hopefully prompt a few professionals to do more proper research. Of course I expect there to be a limit to this progress as in the 8 years since my wife was first diagnosed her brain will have shrunk considerably so I do not expect her memory to return but on the other hand my wife’s quality of life has been improved. The black box on the left is the external speaker. Surprisingly, she is also sleeping better and not suffering as much with the sleep apnoea problem that she’s always had. Her odd physical habits have not been changed so far but she is definitely walking better and not shuffling her feet as she used to. So now 7 weeks on the improvement in her awareness has continued to the point where she is starting to be able to put a few words together and to respond to questions neither of which she has been able to do for nearly a year. I found it necessary to connect external speakers to my laptop in order to pick up such a low note and to run it at a level of between 46-54 decibels so that she hears it wherever she is in the room. (I’ve recently started to do it twice a day for slightly shorter sessions). So I have continued to use your tone generator using a 40Hz sine wave for about an hour each day. ![]() ![]() So I have been trying the sound therapy on my wife who is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s and to my surprise after 8 days she started to show small signs of being more mentally alert than before. There is sparse info on the net about these experiments though there is a recent piece about it. I have been following up on some research which my daughters had done about the treatment of Alzheimers by using a 40Hz flickering light source or alternatively a 40Hz sound source. Far be it from me to take away from all these worthwhile applications, but last week, I got a message from Dennis Tuffin (of Devon, England), describing a new use for my generator which may very well trump everything else:įor the past 7 weeks I have been using your tone-generator for a purpose I wouldn’t think you had envisaged but about which I am sure you will be interested. Since then, I have heard from people using my generator to teach physics, practice violin, drive away carpenter bees, tune DIY speakers, analyze room acoustics, calibrate vintage synthesizers, cause mischief in class with frequencies the teacher can’t hear, and even open a portal to Sedona, AZ. In 2012, I made a Web-based tone generator with the goal of helping tinnitus patients determine the frequency of their tinnitus to better target therapy.
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