Introduction

I guess tonight is as good of time as any to start off this blog. I've been wanting to start this for maybe two years now, but it used to just be a dream of mine. The purpose of this blog is to, you guessed it, explore my mind and machines. Wow.

The prime focus for starting this blog is in my interest for the brain and its cognitive functions. I want a place where I can perform both objective experimentation and subjective exploration, and express my thoughts on my findings. The reason I've waited so long to start this blog is that I wanted my own electroencephalograph (EEG) as a tool to appease my curiosity.

Ya I hope I spelled that right. An EEG measures brain waves at a localized region of the brain. This nifty device would help me address so many questions I have about cognitive dynamics and the nature of consciousness. For instance, I want to explore the subjective idea of immersion and getting lost in one's own reality. This phenomena emerges in many forms all the way from different kinds of focused and open meditations, to a psychedelic experience, to fear and adrenaline. It even spreads to the moments in life of pure awe and inspiration that Jason Silva attempts to capture in his Youtube series, Shots of Awe. Nothing gets me quite inspired like his unconventional perspective of the world.

So what changed? Why am I finally starting this blog? Well, I finally got an EEG! It's from a kickstarter startup with one of the first open source EEGs on the market. The devices are called the OpenBCI boards. In another post I'll go into why I chose them over some of the other emerging EEG companies right now.

Now what am I going to do first with it? One of my current dreams is to develop a game that uses EEG input and provides feedback in an engaging way that allows the user to learn to control their mind and move it into certain states at will. My real motivation for this game is so that I can play it, but sure I guess it could do some good for anyone else that would like to try it. I've currently started the back end code for this project which can be found on my Github account. I, again, promise to make another post going into much greater detail about my project in the future.

On the side, I'll be doing fun experiments and trying to address any questions I can fathom with it.