Talk:Gamma wave

Precept vs Percept
It seems that in many places this article uses the word "precept" where it should use "percept" but I am not confident enough to make an edit myself.

166.137.135.177 (talk) 02:05, 19 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Because two instances are direct quotes I added [sic] marks, and changed the other instance. Note, that the quote is from reference 4, which looks like it's supposed to be referencing the book by Robert Pollack but is actually just a summary of the book written by someone else. Ideally this reference should be replaced with the actual book and relevant parts of the article verified/rewritten ZeitPolizei (talk) 15:17, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Misleading
This article is misleading and contradictory. It also requires substantially more citations.

1. It confuses gamma waves with brain waves and the inference of the article regarding brain waves contradicts the article on EEG.

2. It confuses what gamma waves do an do not signify. While the article states "Gamma waves are involved in higher mental activity" the citation based evidence contradicts this view "Vanderwolf (2000) pointed out that gamma waves are often more prominent during anesthesia"

The article is more a quasi-scientific point of view than an encyclopedic article. LookingGlass (talk) 08:44, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

This is unfortunate as there are genuine scientific findings that could be discussed here. However any discussion should start with the recognition that as yet we don’t know the basis for phenomena like consciousness. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DJM77bci (talk • contribs) 11:36, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

This isn't a contradiction. Depending on the anesthetic, anesthesia could lead to 'higher mental activity'. Psychedelic anesthetics like Ketamine or N2O could do both, and I don't think opiates supress mental activity. Do you know what drugs were used in the Vanderwolf (2000) reference?

Links to Holonomic brain theory
It's bad form to revert someone without commenting on the talk page. It leaves no room for discussion, and leads to bad blood. That's why I'm placing this comment, to give an opportunity to for consensus to emerge. Please discuss this link prior to adding it back. brenneman (t) (c) 11:54, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Edit summaries, generally, are sufficient, especially when countering systematic deletions on many articles, as is the case here. With regard to content, wave pattern interferences are the core dynamic of the holonomic brain theory developed by Karl Pribram in collaboration with David Bohm, and thus would aid readers in understanding the nature of gamma waves.  There is plenty of mainstream black hole spam generated by the quarter trillion dollar drug industry, and the Wikipedia offers a chance to provide insights into the bleak void left behind by least common denominator propaganda.  Ombudsman 17:59, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
 * So what that really translates to is "Because my favorite theories are Clearly True and Clearly Important, it completely justifies my using Wikipedia as a soapbox. Those rules which say that's not what Wikipedia is for clearly don't apply to my hobbyhorses, they're rules for everyone else." -- Antaeus Feldspar 01:34, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe that Pribram's holonomic brain theory has much of a following among Neuroscientists. That sort of speculation would be very hard to support with actual empirical evidence. This is not going to "aid readers in understanding the nature of gamma waves". The truth of the matter is that we really don't know what they are.

Revision Jun 09
As noted, the article was indeed poorly written. The lead did not explain why gamma waves were important; there were a lot of unsupported statements.

I added a lot of citations, re-did the lead, added subsections dealing with the history of the idea etc. and removed all the comments. I trust this addresses the major issues, but it would be good if there were more documented aspects re: the opposition view. Also I commented out an interesting sentence re: creativity going up when freq goes from 40hz to 20hz - pls add citation and re-insert?

Re: Holonomic theory - that largely used analogy and didn't really have the synchrony evidence. It is a completely different cup of tea.

At some point, we might wish to separate "gamma wave" from "gamma wave hypothesis" - but the latter notion still does not seem to have a coherent name. mukerjee (talk) 12:31, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Out of date. Add work of Singer, Melloni etc Datafile28 (talk) 07:46, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Useless
Quite frankly, I came here to say this article is utter useless right now (the most useful information is that it's the 25-100 Hz band!). The "consciousness" debate is too speculative (and perhaps belong to another article, such as consciousness) and it lacks relevant information. I can compare with Delta wave, a similar topic which is in much better shape.

For reference, what I was looking for was gamma band synchronization, which (for example) in some areas of the prefrontal cortex is related to tasks requiring attention. I can link to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19400723 but there's ton of research in this area. If I can find secondary sources, perhaps I will improve this article later. --177.20.130.13 (talk) 15:23, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Clean-Ups Needed
As of January 20, 2014, this article is in bad shape. There are currently 3 sentences in this entire article that are not either talking about unity of consciousness or organized under that heading. If "Unity of Consciousness Theory" deserves its own article (which would be appropriate if it is discussed by more than one author - I am not the authority on this subject), it should have one separate from this article. This article should be about Gamma Waves, not the theory. Specific fixes needed:


 * Intro: "Popular theories" should not be part of the basic intro unless the article is about the theory. This is the space for the basic definition and summary.
 * Linked to unity of consciousness?: Many of the facts and references in this section can be separated from the concept of unity of consciousness and simply discussed as research into when and why gamma waves are present.
 * Relation to meditation: The first paragraph here is nonsense. The writing is so verbose that the meaning is lost.  It needs to be rewritten in cleaner language or removed.

Personally, I am not a scholar in this area. Someone with more knowledge about brainwaves would be more appropriate than me to make the changes I am proposing, which is why I am posting it on the Talk page.Exaybachay (talk) 15:29, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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Cleanup, Dec 2019
As many past editors have noted, this page is a bit messy, so I will be working on it over the next few days. My priorities are, in order: I anticipate that the first point might attract significant displeasure. If you think I've removed a crucial idea that deserves inclusion in the article, please add it back (with a fresh new citation) or bring it to my attention here. Aeffenberger (talk) 19:17, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) Remove poorly-sourced, speculative statements that (in my opinion) synthesize confusion about the topic for the average reader
 * 2) Add well-sourced, conservative statements about what the field does know about gamma band oscillations
 * 3) Clean up the tone/style of the article & find modern references (these go hand in hand for me -- a sentence that reads "A recent study showed... (2009)" is both poor encyclopedic tone and blatantly false at time of writing this, unless one operates on a geologic timescale)

Altered Gamma Ray activity
In beginning of the article it says people with schizophrenia have "altered " gamma ray activity can someone tell me what altered means in this context is there to much or to little and you or me should probably change it.

The Duke of Mars (talk) 16:10, 29 March 2022 (UTC)