Entertainment Weekly has voted the Kars for Kids song as a top “most hated” advertising jingle. It’s likely the most annoying jingle of all time, because it has been running non-stop for about 25 years on radio and TV. Other tunes, such as Meow Mix’s “Meow Meow Meow Meow…” mono-lyric song, are near the top of the list as well, but compared to Kars for Kids, they are relative newcomers. How does something that is nothing more than a collection of varying sound frequencies become almost universally hated? Conversely, why are many of the “golden oldies” songs enjoyed by young and old alike over and over again? All are just sequences of multiple sound frequencies, after all. How do we interpret the multiple frequencies that we receive?
When we expand our curiosity to the animal kingdom as well, we see that certain collections of frequencies are universally understood. Your pet knows when you are speaking angrily or lovingly to it, even without understanding most of the words. The reaction of some pets to various strangers is considered by many to be a good indication of character, because the pets are supposed to be able to sense good intentions in people. This is thought to be a “sixth sense” that animals have. You may even have a sixth sense about certain people that you meet that you can’t quite explain. All your senses are just picking up on frequencies that are coming from the nearby environment, and if there is a sixth sense, it is also picking up on frequency combinations. That’s because all life, and even every object, molecule, and individual atom all emit and respond to energy frequencies. Responding to frequencies is the very definition of interacting with the environment. In fact, all of existence, according to quantum mechanics, stands between being matter and being energy that is exhibiting specific frequencies. In a sense, we could say that everything is a complex interaction of frequencies. The whole universe is “singing.” We can’t take it all in, so by necessity we filter certain frequencies out.
Our five senses are tuned to specific frequency ranges. There are many frequencies — the majority of those in the environment — to which we are insensitive. We only can detect colors in a relatively narrow frequency range we call “light,” and our audio range is limited to about 20,000 hertz. Radio, mobile phones, and broadcast TV use frequencies we can’t sense, but special devices can. Even in the rather small frequency ranges we can detect, the possible combinations are essentially infinite. So meaning has to be assigned to electromagnetic (EMF) waves, otherwise it would all be unintelligible. So the environment is not only full of EMFs, but those EMFs are full of meaning. A universe without encoded, meaningful frequencies would be devoid of life.
Our brains are our primary interpreters of EMFs. While every part of our bodies reacts to EMF signals, the brain is the most sophisticated in decoding them. It’s not surprising that we spend a lot of research on understanding how the brain reacts with frequencies, and what frequencies it emits. We categorize brain waves into different frequency bands: from slowest to fastest they are Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta and Gamma.
Don’t fence me in
To try to understand EMFs, we categorize bands of frequencies. We categorize TV, radio, microwave, cellular, and other bands for broadcast signals even though there is no natural distinction between those bands. We add further meaning to EMFs by encoding signals in these bands which devices tuned to those frequencies can decode. We are just mimicking and manipulating life, which tunes in certain frequencies and decodes them. But we categorize brainwaves like radio bands, similar to the way we categorize organs and parts of the body. The danger of such taxonomy is that we may assign a function to one artificially assigned band but not another. Nature, however, is a continuum of interacting frequencies, and we don’t want to limit the symphony of waves our brains receive and produce by our artificial categorization. Research, fueled by massive advances in computing power and scanning precision, is now able to consider the full spectrum of brainwaves. This is leading to greater understanding of how brainwaves interact with the environment.
Our brains are listening to our environment. When we listen to music or even simple repeating rhythms, our brains resonate. There is actually neural pathway reorganization and pathway regrowth in response to these patterns— this was shown in a study published in Advanced Science by researchers from Aarhus University and University of Oxford. Researchers there used broad spectrum, spatially precise brain mapping techniques to see how the brain responded to musical patterns. What they discovered was an immediate reconfiguration of brain neural pathways in response to the audio. The brain didn’t simply respond to the patterns, but it aligned itself with them across multiple brain components. You may enjoy music, but are you influenced by it? The answer is yes, whether you realize it or not. This immediately suggests that you want uplifting, positive music when you listen, because you will to an extent become the music that you hear. Other research shows enhanced music alignment for those who play music, and learning to play an instrument causes detectable structural changes in the brain. Music and sound are even linked to enhanced learning and memory. Music can even lead to the release of neurotransmitters and hormones (i.e. dopamine) that can trigger reward responses. Neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to change neural connections in real time, is affected by sound frequencies. But audio isn’t the only environmental frequency band you receive. The biggest and most content-rich band is the visual range.
A picture is worth a thousand words — more or less
Light can carry a lot more information than sound, but it can also carry the same information. Remember the disco era? Flashing lights were in sync with the music beat, reinforcing it visually. The flashing was a low frequency modulation of the light. The brain would respond to both the light and music rhythm, causing an immersive effect on those at the disco. But light, being a much higher frequency than sound, can modulate much higher frequencies. You can hear words and meaningful sounds and grasp meaning from them quickly, but you can get a lot more from visuals. In the high action Star Wars movies, visual images would change very quickly, but viewers were still able to remember scenes in great detail.
Light therapy is used to treat many conditions. Overall light is used to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and other mood disorders. Light regulates the circadian rhythm. Red light therapy penetrates the skin and is absorbed by mitochondria, stimulating them to produce more energy in the form of ATP (adenosine triphosphate). Light therapy is used to treat depression by balancing serotonin activation in the brain. Light intensity affects brain activity in many regions, especially the cerebral cortex subcortical structures, and the cerebellum. It affects cognitive processing (learning) and emotional regulation. As with sound, the brain responds to light by realignment of neural pathways. Those who work night shifts and have little time for normal daytime light exposure often find it hard to maintain mood and outlook.
Brainz for Kids
Both sound and light can have devastating negative effects as well. Kids these days are exposed to many hours of “screen time” looking at phone and computer screens. Social research studies are multiplying because this is a major social issue of our time. Published in Cureus, researchers from the Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Kuppam, India reviewed available social development data on the effects of this screen time on young children during this particularly formative period. “The age at which kids engage with media on a regular basis has fallen from four years in 1970 to four months in the present day.” Their review of studies cites that each one-hour increase in TV exposure at age two corresponded to a 7% decrease in participation in class and a 6% decrease in fourth grade math proficiency. A U.S. study found lower scores on standardized tests directly correlated with higher levels of media exposure. You would think that more input would stimulate learning, right? But the effect of unnatural light frequencies over long periods of time is significant, and screen time cannot effectively replace normal social interaction. Worse, the frequencies themselves could have harmful effects on neural pathways. The orchestra of light images could be playing a discordant, overstimulating concert that could be forming harmful neural pathways — the opposite of light therapy.
We don’t know what EMFs from household wiring, cell phone transmission, and WiFi signals are doing to us. We are not sensitive to these bands. Even so, they are bombarding our cells and having at least some effect. We are swimming in a sea of EMFs, whether natural or artificial. Studies have attempted to determine the EMF damage of modern society. Published in Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics is a study performed at the Department of Pediatrics, Hanyang University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea looking at the impact of EMFs from electrical lines, transmission towers, home appliances, cell phones, WiFi and computers. The main effect of these EMFs, that we are not sensitive to, is stimulation — according to the study. They found that prenatal exposure to 900 MHz resulted in a substantial loss of granule cells and reduction in pyramidal neurons. They found increases in brain oxidative stress relative to the levels of EMF exposure. Basically they found that children are the most vulnerable to EMF damage of any age group.
Good vibrations
Zooming our focus out: when we realize that all that we are and all that surrounds us is energy, or at least has energy characteristics actively producing oscillating frequencies, any interaction with unusual levels of certain frequencies would have an outsized effect on us. Those that enter the eye gate, ear gate, or any other sense is interpreted by the brain. After decoding, those messages have direct impact on the brain, causing it to align with them. We start this process in the womb, and as our brains form, they form based partially on that resonation with the frequencies surrounding us. When the messages carried by those frequencies are decoded, and we understand the negative or positive impact of those messages, they become deep foundations of our thought patterns. Uplifting, loving messages build a good foundation, and angry or fearful messages lay a shaky foundation. The only part of us that is not a direct product of all these messages coming from our environment is our spirit. The brain is mechanical, and the frequencies our brains align with affect how that mechanism operates. So paying attention to the EMFs, the music, and the media content we tune our brains to is a vital part of caring for this complex machine we call our body.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
