Will a £30 strobe machine cause hallucinations? A short thread.

In 1819 the great neuroanatomist Purkinje discovered that waving your fingers in front of your eyes while staring at the sun causes hallucinations - not fictive scenes but the sort of patterns people who take mushrooms call "visuals".

When I learned this, years ago, I tried it without noting the obvious caveat, he stared at the sun with his eyes closed; I didn't and so I saw the sun everywhere I looked for next hour.

The same phenomena was rediscovered by the beatniks in the 1950s; Brion Gysin fell asleep on a bus in the South of France with his face to the window, as he awoke the flickering light from the arbre d'alignement, the trees that line French roads, caused him to hallucinate.

There is a short history here: https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/235945

Last week I heard a talk by Anil Seth, who researchers consciousness and psychedelic drugs and he described his experiments using strobe lighting.

He has a measure of consciousness, the Lempel Ziv complexity of brain activity. This is higher in the awake brain than in the sleeping brain, higher still in the brain of someone taking psychedelics.

He has discovered it is also somewhat higher in people staring at a 10 Hz strobe. Furthermore, in addition to the visuals, the strobe does induce some of the other benefits of psychedelics such as the oceanic feeling.

I, of course, immediately ordered a small £30 strobe machine from gear4music; this was impetuous of me since when it got to the questions and I asked, Anil thought the machine wouldn't be strong enough.

Anyway, it has arrived now so I will know in a few minutes if a £30 strobe machine can cause hallucinations.

Ok, can confirm.

There are lots of colours; very clear colours, like a child's rainbow. The patterns are like a kaleidoscope; it is like falling into a kaleidoscope. It is like coloured tiles, stretched into circular patterns. It moves and shifts all the time.

It doesn't feel real the way for example auditory hallucinations do; when I am very tired I sometimes get auditory hallucination and those feel real.

The patterns from the strobe are just that, patterns that feel almost like they are in the eye. I did get any oceanic feeling either, that could be a "set and setting" thing though, it was a quick experiment between zoom meetings, not a good time to feel at one with the world.

There were patterns though, very vivid, impossible to describe; with a sort of "true but not real" feeling.

It doesn't feel like it exists beyond the strobe though; if you move the strobe the patterns change and when the strobe stops so do the patterns.