Re: First 'Grey' Report?

From: Tim D. Brigham <TBrigham@ksinc.net>
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 08:33:39 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 23:17:06 -0400
Subject: Re: First 'Grey' Report?


>From: Mark Cashman <mcashman@ix.netcom.com>
>Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 13:44:19 -0400
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>Subject: Re: First 'Grey' Report?


Hi Mark,

Excellent post. I know it was addressd to John, but you mentioned
several points which related to my query on neuropsych. Sorry I
don't have time give you a just response- long night of work and
I am going on pure caffeine now- but a few thoughts-

>There are some obvious relationships between medical
>symptoms which seem common between abductees /
>high strangeness witnesses and epilepsy patients (or,
>one should say, persons with traumatic brain injury). An
>excellent survey of these symptoms can be found at

>http://www.ellenwhite.org/headinjury.htm

>They include:

>"the following complaints: headaches, vertigo and dizziness,
>nervousness, irritability, impaired memory, inability to
>concentrate, excessive fatigue, difficulty with sleep... Other
>attributes include a sense of ill health and a reduction
>in the capacity to earn a livelihood."

>These symptoms, which are present in various high-strangeness
>witnesses (usually after the event), can still be suggestive in
>two ways -

>1) They are the cause of the report.

>2) They are the result of the events described (i.e. "paralysis"
>by ray, etc. causes temporary or permanent brain malfunction
>or damage)

Agreed that we have to be very careful about inferring causation,
one way or the other.

>On the pro-abduction-reality side of a relationship between TLE
>and abductions is:

>"In 1933 Penfield discovered that when he electrically
>stimulated certain groups of nerve cells in the temporal lobe,
>the patient would "relive" - as in a moving picture or a
>"flashback" - what had been experienced in one way or another
>earlier in life. In other words, the temporal lobe system
>records all the experiences that a particular person has had;
>and even if it is beyond the direct recall of the individual
>(forgotten), it is still recorded and can be brought back to
>consciousness by artificial electrical stimulation or by an
>electrical discharge in the brain during an epileptic seizure."

>In other words, if a witness had a TLE effect as a result of an
>event in a real abduction experience, or exposure to some weapon
>used by the occupants, it is possible for a later seizure to
>"replay" the actual events at a later date. Again, something
>similar to this has been reported occasionally in the UFO
>literature.


However, I don't think the replay would necessarily be of the
event which physically 'caused' the TLE, if in fact that is what
happened. Unlike PTSD, I don't think a TLE seizure would cause
the replay of any _specific_ memory, and instead it would be -
might be, I should say- random (which is just another word for
"chosen by a method which we don't yet know about").

<snip>

>Another pattern of interest which should be looked for in the
>abduction data is:

>"Lennox has pointed out that seizures lasting several hours
>might occur once or twice a year; and that the more frequent the
>seizures are, the more likely that they will be of short
>duration. (79) Partial complex seizures usually last from only a
>few seconds to several minutes, but may also last hours and,
>rarely, days."

>In other words, if abductions are related to TLE, then those
>reporting most frequent abductions will show the shortest amount
>of missing time for each (on average). Again, this is a study
>which has not been done.


Very intersting, and very true. However, as I kick around
possible ideas for research relating to the subject of abduction
experiences, more and more problems creep in, making it a
logistical nightmare for me.  One major one is, how can we be
sure that we measure a representative population of "abductees?"
there may be many, many causal factors behind abduction reports,
as I am sure you will agree. If I measure the widget response on
16 abductees, or, say, how their EEG's fluctuate when analyzing a
stimulus of an unusual nature in a lab compared to a control
group, what if 6 abductees have unusual results, but these
results are masked by the others, causing us to think there is no
significant difference? Possibly comparing each participant's
result to the mean could would lead to some understanding and
maybe even fodder for more research? In which we would be
studying the subgroup of abductees who showed significant
differences and hence their reports may likely have a large
biological component.... Thoughts on this are welcome. I am of
course not saying that this phenomenon is beyond the scope of
scientific inquiry, I am just saying I don't know if it can be
carried out by someone like me.... yet ;) And I hope you don;t
mind my using your discussion of such research as a springboard
to clear up some of my own muddled thoughts on the matter.


<snip>

>Of course, we have the Walton case and the Andreasson case
>to name two very famous cases. In the Walton case, the
>witnesses did not in any way participate in the abduction
>and thus the case may be considered multiple independent
>witness. The Allagash abduction is a multiple abduction, and,
>of course, so is the Hill case.


The Allagash case is problematic for me- mainly because of the
hypnosis aspect and one of the participant's statement that his
memories of the event "don't feel like a real memory," and that
he himself is unsure of what happened.

The Hill case I find more interesting for a variety of reasons,
but again, it suffers from its own problems. The Venezuela and
New Zealand cases you mention, and other cases of that ilk, seem
to be more promising in regards to be being observable and
objectively and physically real, but one must wonder if they may
suffer from problems of their own, which we just don't know about
for reasons of geography, amount of research done, language
barriers, etc etc.

>I hope that none of this will be taken as disrespect to those
>who have had or reported these experiences. Determining
>the nature of the abduction experience is important, if
>for no other reason than to end or alleviate the suffering
>of those with these experiences. Sadly, as careful as many
>of the researchers in this field have tried to be, however,
>there is a tremendous amount of contamination and there
>are many problematic accounts. We must be very very
>careful to avoid attributing specific objective reality to
>some of these events, and we must be especially wary
>of doing damage to concepts of objective physical reality
>in attempting to bring these events within the sphere of
>understanding. If, indeed, these events present new
>insights into the nature of reality, those insights will have
>to wait until the serious, objective, and fact-based
>research required has been undertaken.

>------
>Mark Cashman, creator of The Temporal Doorway at
>http://www.temporaldoorway.com
>- Original digital art, writing, music and more -


Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I very much agree with
your last statement. Despite my rantings on possible challenges
to our concept of reality that UFOs/abductions _may_ present
(that is, when I am not in a PSH fit), I am in no way advocating
a "paranormal theory" of their nature, in that paranormal, to me,
applies something outside the realm of science. I simply maintain
that science isn't over yet, not that it's useless in regards to
these phenomena. But, I also think it IS important that we go
over all possible theories to account for such things. For
example, you mentioned (via a quote taken from a TLE essay I
believe) the possibly that deliberately induced hallucinations,
aimed at the temporal lobe, could be responsible for some
accounts. For some time I have found that idea very intriguing.
Of course the work of someone like Persinger doesn't replicate
abduction experiences perfectly, but we must keep in mind that
his methods may not nearly be refined. There are so many
possibilities of what may be occuring, and combinations of
different factors which may be at play, sometimes I feel like I
need to make a concept map just so I can keep my own train of
thought (there's a good years work right there). But I don't
dismiss the ETH, or the PSH, or anything else, completely. Heck,
maybe the flexing of that wonderful mental muscle we call the
brain, or "the noodle" to use a technical term, is one of the
reasons we are facing this in the first place.

Best wishes,
Tim Brigham
PS Excuse any loopy typos or mistakes. But hey, who needs sleep,
right? Well, me, for one.


)+(
TBrigham@ksinc.net
www.ksinc.net/~devilsad/ufo.htm The Devil's Advocate
www.ksinc.net/~devilsad/ring.htm Operation MindPhuck
"Better to go hungry than to feast on lies."
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