Brainwaves – Prof Prabhat Ranjan’s Blog

How Did I Start Working in the Disability Sector

My chance entry to the disability sector through a student project changed my life for better and made me a better human being as I learned to be more positive and to “Count the ability and not the disability”

Getting Initiated

In DA-IICT, we had introduced design thinking in the second semester of BTech(ICT) program. This was followed by an internship in summer(later changed to winter) in a rural area and a Zero Credit Design project in the second year. Idea was to let them explore some area of societal benefit for a full year without any pressure of grades and timeline.

Two students, Pallavi and Ramya(both from Hyderabad) approached me(most likely in 2007) to work with me on design project with an interest in helping persons with visual impairment. They visited Blind People’s Association in Ahmedabad to get an idea of various needs. Later in summer vacation, they came across news about a girl, Bhawana from Chennai, who had passed class 10th. Normally this does not make news but Bhawana was not in a position to move or talk. She did not have fine finger movement just a coarse movement of hands. In spite of these conditions, her passing of 10th was worthy of news. Pallavi and Ramya visited her in Chennai to understand how she studies and carries out other functions.

Miracle recovery with my help!

This is a real story narrated by a beneficiary herself. I never knew anything like this was possible when she got in touch with me. It was a major surprise and learning too. I have had few other users but this case is very striking. I feel this would open up path of learning for many many persons and we need to look at learning in a different way.

Continue reading “Miracle recovery with my help!”

Learning disability, Mantra and Brainwaves!

I have been trying to understand brainwaves and its relationship to learning disability in children. Scientific research shows the parameter Beta1/Theta waves being a key criteria. To improve this “Brain Entrainment” or neurofeedback can be used. These typically need auditory stimulation of brain. Our Yoga and mediation also seem to work on brainwaves. I was wondering if our traditional “Mantra” also has something to do with this. I found this on net – “In his research conducted a few years ago, Dr Herbert Benson observed that chanting of specific mantras produced a “relaxation” response, causing reduction of heart beat, brain waves and respiration.”

In one more paper,, they claim “Practitioners understand ‘‘meditation,’’ or mental training, to be a process of familiarization with one’s own mental life leading to long-lasting changes in cognition and emotion. Little is known about this process and its impact on the brain. Here we find that long-term Buddhist practitioners self-induce sustained electroencephalographic high-amplitude gamma-band oscillations and phase-synchrony during meditation. These electroencephalogram patterns differ from those of controls, in particular over lateral frontoparietal electrodes. In addition, the ratio of gamma-band activity (25–42 Hz) to slow oscillatory activity (4–13 Hz) is initially higher in the resting baseline before meditation for the practitioners than the controls over medial frontoparietal electrodes. This difference increases sharply during meditation over most of the scalp electrodes and remains higher than the initial baseline in the post meditation baseline. These data suggest that mental training involves temporal integrative mechanisms and may induce short term and long-term neural changes.”

West has started using “mantra” for their benefit as seen in this video :Gayatri Mantra being used in West

So now need to find if learning disability can be improved through our traditional knowledge!