TV And Our Brains

According to scientific studies, watching television can bring a certain state on our human brain, by inducing in some low alpha waves onto it. What are these alpha waves? They are brainwaves between 8 to 12 HZ, which are generally associated with the relaxed and meditative states as well as suggestibility brain states.

According to researchers, TV watching is quite similar to staring at a blank wall for many hours on end. In fact, Herbert Krugman led an experiment in the year of 1969 in which one person was monitored through many tests and it was discovered that in less than one minute's time of TV watching, that person's brain moved from the Beta wave-state (Beta waves are associated with logical and active thinking) to the passive Alpha waves. Also, the person's brain returned to Beta waves' state when he stopped watching TV and started reading a magazine.

This can indicate for instance one thing, and that is the fact that most brain parts which are responsible for logical thinking, can fade out during TV watching time. Although of course one cannot conclude after experimenting solely on one person's brain, to assume the effects of TV on people in general, there have been many researches made after Krugman's, which have repeatedly attested that indeed the act of TV watching has the result of producing low Alpha range brainwaves.

Of course, advertising companies have known of this for a long time now, and they also are good at taking advantage of this people's brain state of the regular TV viewer, in order to make him/her sort of willingly be exposed to any of their products and induce in people the desire to buy their advertised on TV products. The thing about TV commercials is that in fact there is no need to use any subliminal messages whatsoever. So the advertisers' task is simply to show a product on the TV screen, relate it to something positive and desirably, and let the viewers have their cake and eat it, so to speak, without the viewers' realizing it wasn't exactly to their own good.

Indeed, most people would only have to gain if they reduced their television viewing time. In addition to that, according to some more researches people suffering from ADD (attention-deficit disorder) or ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) have their brains mostly polluted with excessive Delta, Theta and Alpha waves, and therefore would be most likely to reduce this by either reducing TV watching time, or renouncing it altogether. The real thing is (and which of course, is not said on TV) watching TV can be harmful to anyone's attention capacity and are especially noxious for those who already overpass their number of Alpha waves.