![]() What do oscillations or waves have in common? The feature that relates such phenomena is periodicity. You start a motion by pushing the child in a swing or you can increase the energy of atoms vibrating in a crystal with heat. Every system that oscillates has something in common. The human body itself is a treasure-trove of vibratory phenomena. What do an ocean buoy, a guitar, a child in a swing, or the beating of heart all have in common? They all oscillate – meaning they move back and forth between two points. Virtually every system oscillates or vibrates freely in a large variety of ways. Thanks to 19-year-old Adroit Dexter from India for this question.The vibrations and oscillations of mechanical systems remain one of the most important fields of study in physics. Meanwhile, the song on the radio remains the same. “It is a very exciting field of research, you never know how the brain will respond to different stimuli,” says Pantazis. Projects are as diverse as studying visual attention, language processing, or even olfactory responses to pleasant and unpleasant smells. The MEG lab, open since March 2011, is used by researchers across MIT. These “superconducting quantum interference detectors” (SQUID) are cooled to near absolute zero, which makes them superconductive and, according to Pantazis, “able to measure even the slightest magnetic signals from the brain.” The MEG scanner consists of a helmet that contains 306 sensors spaced uniformly across its surface. “Like a rock in the middle of a river, this metal forces all electromagnetic signals to flow around the room and doesn’t let any inside,” says Pantazis. To capture brain signals, the MEG scanner is in a room shielded with mu metal, a special alloy that blocks external magnetic fields. ![]() MIT recently installed a new MEG scanner to study the function of the human brain. ![]() Signals from the brain are a billionth of that strength.” For comparison, says Pantazis, “the magnetic field of the earth is just strong enough to move the needle of a compass. Even if that was the case, brain waves are so weak, they are hardly measurable at all. “The shape of the waves changes linearly, they add to and subtract from one another,” says Dimitrios Pantazis, director of the Magnetoencephalography (MEG) Laboratory at MIT’s McGovern Institute. As a result, songs become static.īut, says Pantazis, since their frequencies are so wildly different, brain waves don’t interfere with radio waves. This might happen when the signals from two radio stations, both broadcasting at 89.7 megahertz from different cities, bump into one another. Interference happens when two waves of the same or very similar frequencies bump into each other. This activity fires thousands of neurons simultaneously at the same frequency generating a wave - but at a rate closer to 10 to 100 cycles per second. The human brain also emits waves, like when a person focuses her attention or remembers something. Radio waves, which include radio and other wireless transmission signals, as well as other natural signals in the same frequency, peak and trough at between megahertz - that’s between 50 million and one billion oscillations per second. ![]() The difference between brain waves, radio waves, and other electromagnetic waves (such as visible light, X-rays, and Gamma rays) lies in their frequency - that is, how often the waves peak and trough in a second. Radio waves and brain waves are both forms of electromagnetic radiation - waves of energy that travel at the speed of light. Brain waves are too slow, and so weak they’re extremely hard to measure… By Elizabeth Dougherty Can brain waves interfere with radio waves? ![]()
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