Goggles & CRT TV comparison

The TV screen and goggles are of the same family. Its VIDEO output has the same purpose. A person using the goggles may have a similar viewing experience to a person using a device with an LCD or PLASMA or CRT screen or even a portable DVD player.

Where the goggles shine in respect to say a (CRT) Cathode Ray Tube (TV screen) is that the goggles are a lot more portable and much lighter than a TV or Flat Plasma/LCD screen. In function, they are essentially the same, except the goggles are a lot smaller and so very portable, that you can comfortably wear them on your head. You can even go to bed with them on, and not compromise your neck or eye position. This is the reason they can be successfully used with patients who are bed bound. If you were not bed ridden at home, you could get a very similar experience from a TV set or a portable DVD player.

The VHM is inherently built to be highly portable, and as such it can be successfully used with patients lying down in hospital beds. You cannot do this with a portable DVD player or a TV set. Even if you attempted to do it, you would be distracted by any visual movement and hospital noises all around you.

To try to get a similar effect using a TV set, you would need to mount the TV horizontally on the ceiling, through the plaster for a vertical up viewing. Even if you did decide to do this, you would still have the issue of peripheral vision interference and external noise. You could put on a set of headphones, that would help the sound and sound distractions, but visually you would not be better off.

VISUAL

The way the cinema people get around this problem is, they put a large bright projected screen in front of you so that most of your vision is addressed. The lights are turned down very low, so your visual attention is focused on the screen.

All other “Visual” distractions such as, other people in the aisles, have been blackened out by withdrawal of light. When the lights are turned down, you cannot see them any more. To the mind they are no longer important, or they cease to exist. They are still there, of course they are, but by the elimination of light, your “Visual” sensors have been fooled into thinking that they are no longer there. Additionally, the projected screen is so much larger than the small distractions all around you. Now with the lights taken down, all of your attention is focused on the movie playing.

Notice now how the visual dynamic range of things that are “very dark or black”, and to things that are “bright and white” has been altered. Notice how the proportion of what you are looking at, in relation to the distractions around you has been addressed. Notice how your attention has been altered. Your “Visual” sensors will now respond more readily to the projected screen in front of you. It will not respond to any other visual disturbances around you, as you cannot see them. Your visual attention has been changed. This is because light has been withdrawn from other surrounding subjects. In simple terms you cannot “see or perceive” them. Now that the “Visual” side of things is taken care off, let’s see what they do with the sound

AUDITORY

The same type of thing is done with your “Auditory” sensors but in this case the science behind it is much simpler. The sound in the cinema is turned up to a fairly loud volume. This is done to a level, so that the projected sound drowns out all the surrounding lollies and popcorn noises around you. This is deliberate. The reason for this is that there is a more dynamic range in the sound, from soft to loud. Raising the volume buries the smaller sounds and noises. If you want to get slightly technical, you could say that by boosting sound volume, cinema people are improving the signal to noise ratio.

Further explanations

Be it “Visual” sensors which you are aiming to optimise, or be it “Auditory” sensors, the intention is the same. In both realms you are trying to eliminate what you DON’T want to “see” or “hear” and focus on what you DO want to “see” or “hear”. To do this, you reduce what you don’t want, and increase what you do want. Sounds simple, and it is.

The effect is the same with the goggles. The goggles do the same sort of thing with your peripheral vision, except this time instead of turning the lights down, they block or box in your vision. Why do you think they put blinkers on horses in street traffic? This is so the horse focuses on what it should be seeing and doing. The blinkers block unwanted visual scenery. The VHM runs on a similar idea. The headphones do the same thing with sound. They prevent outside noises from reaching your ears, and they feed sound to your ears from the VHM, so you hear only “the therapy” which is what you are supposed to hear.

Costs & Billing

The machine is said to cost $12,000 to construct. You cannot purchase it, and it is not for sale. The VHM was designed to be rented and not purchased. Its contents are to be viewed on a user pays billing system. There is an internal counter which records number of sessions played.

The main thrust

It seems that the main thrust of the machine is in its intellectual property i.e. the way that the Audio/Video modules are constructed or put together. The effort that has gone into designing the intellectual property of the VHM, would be similarly compared with creating and directing a movie from scratch.

The designers have gone a long way to target the patients’ “visual” and “auditory” sensors, and have employed a lot of technology and skill to create modules designed to heal the mind. With all this, the machine is said to bring about profound healing in some clients.