The Magnetized Man

Frequency is just the number of times a familiar event repeats itself. If you’re lost in the forest and you keep passing the same tree, you’d think, “I’m going in circles.” You might panic and speed up, only to pass the same tree over and over and over again. There is a love/hate relationship with this tree. It’s a reminder that you’re not where you want to be (panic!) as well as a mark of the familiar (relief!) that shows you’re not alone and that you haven’t gone crazy. If you start to accept your fate, you might slow down and still see the same marker, but you might notice some other things about yourself and your surroundings that help you eventually make progress. 

This is often what happens in life. We go in circles or spin our wheels. The defining feature of a cycle is the object’s circulation around a central point or its movement away and towards a point of equilibrium. If you take a yoyo and spin it around quickly in a circle, the central point is your hand or arm. If you watch waves on the ocean, the point of equilibrium is the resting state of the ocean. Whenever people talk about frequencies, all they are talking about is the speed of an object’s return to its central point or to its equilibrium.

There are also waves within our brains. They are called neural oscillations. This is the rhythmic and regularly repeated electrical activity in the brain. Cross-frequency coupling (CFC) talks about lower-frequency brainwaves (which move across larger networks) modulate higher-frequency brainwaves (which are more localized). Neural oscillations happen at three levels of analysis: the microscopic, the mesoscopic, and the macroscopic. At the microscopic level, there are neural trains or spike trains (single neuron). At the mesoscropic level, there are movements between neurons (population). And at the macroscopic level, there is movement between sections of neurons (network).  

The Microscopic Level: Neural Trains and Spike Trains

There is something called the “all-or-nothing” principle in neuroscience. Neurons are always receiving stimulus or being stimulated. This causes the neuron to generate an electrical signal. If this electrical signal passes the neuron’s membrane potential (which is like a line in the sand) it generates what’s known as an action potential. If it passes this threshold, it’s considered an action potential, and if it doesn’t, it isn’t. This is when the electrical energy is converted into chemicals called neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters travel through the synaptic cleft and then attach to receptor sites on what’s known as a postsynaptic neuron. This activity is what’s measured at the microscopic level. 

Neurons maintain a negative charge, due to the higher amount of negative ions in the neurons relative to the large number of positive ions in the extracellular space. There is something called spike trains. Neurons have something called neuronal responses, which are electrical or chemical reactions in response to external or internal stimuli. Examples of external stimuli are light, sound, touch, and smell. Internal stimuli are blood sugar levels, pH changes, hormone levels, and stretch receptors in muscles. 

There are two types of glucose receptors or glucose-sensing neurons in the brain: glucose-excited (GE) neurons and glucose-inhibited (GI) neurons. When GE neurons sense more glucose, they increase their firing rate and as glucose levels start to fall, they reduce their firing rate. GI neurons increase their firing rate when glucose levels fall. An increase in blood sugar is an increase in glucose. Changes in pH levels affect the ion channels and receptors in a neuron. pH changes in the body can be caused by medical conditions, such as diabetes, and lifestyle factors such as stress or poor diet. When there’s a hormonal change, hormones bind to the specific hormone receptors on neurons, which leads to changes in the neuron’s intracellular signalling pathways which affects its excitability. Stretch receptors monitor the degree and rate of a stretch. This leads to a change in neuronal activity through a process known as mechanotransduction.

Light stimuli become neuronal stimuli through a process known as phototransduction. Sound stimuli use a process called mechanotransduction. Scent stimuli use a process called olfactory signal transduction. Taste stimuli is converted to neuronal stimuli when food chemicals bind to receptors on taste receptor cells. Touch stimuli are converted into neuronal stimuli through a process known as transduction. 

If you understand this, you can start to understand when you’re returning to a state of equilibrium that is not where or who you want to be. You can start to see that everything – your fear, your anxieties, your shame – are just chemicals in the body playing a familiar tune whenever you hear certain words and think certain thoughts. And you can start asking yourself: what happens if I build a new association? What happens if I practice with the smallest things and let them take as long as they need to? What happens if I stretched out how long it took me to have a pleasurable cycle in my brain and body, allowing me to feel a bit uncomfortable in the short term, but get a bigger reward and benefit over the long term?