A brief history – how did science and cats discover SMR EEG training?
In 1968, Dr. Barry Sterman, a neuroscientist at UCLA medical school, proved that cats in his lab could be trained to make more EEG activity at 12-15 Hz frequencies, using operant conditioning. He called it SMR – Sensory Motor Rhythm. Sterman then used the same cats for a NASA contract to investigate whether rocket fuel could cause seizure activity. The cats were exposed to a volatile fuel called hydrazine. Half the cats seized in a predictable dose response curve. The other half of thecats – those who had increased SMR brainwaves in the last experiment, had a dramatic reduction in seizure thresholds vs. the normal cats. It was a very unexpected outcome. After additional research, EEG training frequency was tried on a woman who worked in Sterman’s lab with uncontrolledseizures (using 12-15 frequency training along the sensory motor strip). The training had the same inhibitory effect that it did on the cats (the woman now has a California driver’s license). These events launched the fiel
