![]() ![]() When Berger was young, the idea of paranormal psychic communication didn’t sound as wacko as it does now. It has also yielded fundamental insights into how the brain works, revealing details about the brain’s activity while at rest, or while crunching numbers or tripping on hallucinogens. ![]() It can spot seizures, monitor sleep and even help determine brain death. In the century since, the EEG has become an indispensable clinical tool. But in the attempt, Berger ended up making a key contribution to modern medicine and science: He invented the electroencephalogram, or EEG, a device that could read the brain’s electrical activity.īerger’s machine, first used successfully in 1924, produced a readout of squiggles that represented the electricity created by collections of firing nerve cells in the brain. Chasing after a scientific basis for telepathy was a dead end, of course. So he decided to study psychiatry, beginning a quest to uncover how thoughts could travel between people. Hans was convinced that he had transmitted his thoughts of mortal fear to his sister - somehow. To young Berger, this eerie timing was no coincidence: It was a case of “spontaneous telepathy,” he later wrote. She talked her father into sending a telegram asking if everything was all right. On that same day, his sister, far away, got a bad feeling about Hans. In 1893, when he was 19, Berger fell off his horse during maneuvers training with the German military and was nearly trampled. A brush with death led Hans Berger to invent a machine that could eavesdrop on the brain. ![]()
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