[rubystreet (OP)]

This thread might sound super-paranoid but it is real. There are others on Youtube who seem to have a similar problem.

I have a former neighbor who has been using radio frequencies to eavesdrop on me. They can "listen in" on my thoughts by pointing a beam of some kind of radiation into my room and at my head. (I know this is real. There are things that they know about me that there is no way they could know.) They could be using Extra Low Frequencies or on the other end, microwaves. Is there anyone out there who knows how to detect Extra Low Frequencies. And also how to block it? A faraday cage is beyond my budget limit.

I think they are using Ultra Low Frequencies because the former neighbor was in the Navy. He attended the Naval Nuclear Power School back in the 80s. ULF would be used by the navy to communicate with other subs because salt water would make it impossible for the radio waves to travel.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[RD]

#1. It's impossible to read someone's mind.
If such a mind-reading device existed why do technologically-advanced countries resort to torture or offer tens of millions of dollars to obtain information if they had a radio-device which could read someone's thoughts remotely to obtain accurate information ? 

#2. "my neighbours can read my mind via radio waves" is a stereotypical description of a schizophrenia-type illness ...

People with schizophrenia can have delusions that seem bizarre, such as believing that neighbors can control their behavior with magnetic waves. They may also believe that people on television are directing special messages to them, or that radio stations are broadcasting their thoughts aloud to others ... They may have paranoid delusions and believe that others are trying to harm them, such as by cheating, harassing, poisoning, spying on, or plotting against them or the people they care about. These beliefs are called "delusions of persecution."

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia/index.shtml

Some people develop a delusional idea to explain a hallucination they are having. For example, if they have heard voices describing their actions, they may have a delusion that someone is monitoring their actions. Someone experiencing a paranoid delusion may believe they are being harassed or persecuted. They may believe they are being chased, followed, watched, plotted against or poisoned, often by a family member or friend.

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Schizophrenia/Pages/Symptoms.aspx

This thread might sound super-paranoid but it is real. There are others on Youtube who seem to have a similar problem.

Schizophrenia-type illnesses affect about 1% of the adult population ...

    Schizophrenia affects about 24 million people wordwide.
    Schizophrenia is a treatable disorder, treatment being more effective in its initial stages.
    More than 50% of persons with schizophrenia are not receiving appropriate care.

http://www.who.int/mental_health/management/schizophrenia/en/

 so there are quite a few videos created by people with untreated schizophrenia on YouTube.


If you are taking "recreational" "street" drugs , giving them up may help ...

... Certain drugs, particularly cannabis, cocaine, LSD or amphetamines, may trigger some symptoms of schizophrenia, especially in people who are susceptible. Using amphetamines or cocaine can lead to psychosis and can cause a relapse in people recovering from an earlier episode.

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Schizophrenia/Pages/Causes.aspx

[evan_au]

"listen in" on my thoughts by pointing a beam of some kind of radiation

The current state of the art in reading peoples minds electronically includes:

• EEG: Placing a bank of electrodes on your scalp. Each electrode picks up the activity of billions of neurones, all mixed together. It can detect gross patterns of behaviour like awake, asleep, or epileptic seizures. It can localise this activity to a section of the brain, but this still contains billions of neurones. It cannot read thoughts, and you would certainly be aware if someone was doing it to you. 
  
• Electrocorticography: This gets detailed information from a few neurones (up to a few hundred neurones) by placing electrodes on/in the brain. It provides extremely detailed information about the behaviour of these individual neurones, but the sample size is too small to tell you much about what the person is thinking. This requires surgical intervention, and attaching a device to your head to record the results. It requires a training phase where the user is presented with many stimuli, in an attempt to find one that triggers each monitored neurone; in one case, a neurone was found that fired vigorously when the patient was presented with an image of an actress from their favourite TV show! This invasive technique is only justified in cases such as patients with untreatable epilepsy, where they monitor the electrodes for a few days in an attempt to identify the source of seizures, as a prelude for surgery.
  
• fMRI: This looks at changes in blood oxygenation in various parts of the brain as a user is presented with various stimuli. These stimuli cause some parts of the brain to work more or less harder; over time, researchers have come to associate certain areas of the brain with fear, happiness, listening, etc. It requires the patient to lie extremely still, inside a powerful magnetic field; the rapidly changing fields inside the machine reportedly cause a lot of noise, so you would certainly know it was happening! More recent machines have better resolution, down to cubic millimeters of brain, and under a second of data. But this is still many millions of neurones, and thousands of nerve impulses.
  
• fMRI is the best we have today, but it is too coarse to monitor individual thoughts - at best it can give a general impression of the types of things that someone is thinking about.

They could be using Extra Low Frequencies or on the other end, microwaves

• Extra Low Frequencies can carry very little information - perhaps 10-100 bits per second. This is not enough bandwidth to carry any useful information about a brain. fMRI machines collect gigabits of information to draw their vague pictures of brain activity.
  
• Extra Low Frequencies have Extra Long Wavelengths (miles), and so any signals picked up could be from you or someone living in the next block. This is ineffective for reading minds.
  
• Microwaves are able to carry far more information, but they don't tend to penetrate wet things like skulls. If it did penetrate, it would not be able to stop at other wet thinks like neurones.
  
• Microwaves have various wavelengths from centimeters down to millimeters. Millimeter waves are blocked by water (even moisture in the air). But even a cubic millimeter represents millions of neurones, and the chemical activity of the neurone does not reflect microwaves.
  
• One would have to conclude that remote sensing of brain waves is far beyond our current technology - and remote reading minds is not feasible with ELF or microwaves.
  
• So monitoring people electronically has to rely on more mundane methods like phone tapping, capturing emails or monitoring websites you visit or comments you post.

If you are still worried after the technical explanation, I suggest that you talk to a counselor.

[Bored chemist]

This thread might sound super-paranoid but it is real. There are others on Youtube who seem to have a similar problem.

I have a former neighbor who has been using radio frequencies to eavesdrop on me. They can "listen in" on my thoughts by pointing a beam of some kind of radiation into my room and at my head. (I know this is real. There are things that they know about me that there is no way they could know.) They could be using Extra Low Frequencies or on the other end, microwaves. Is there anyone out there who knows how to detect Extra Low Frequencies. And also how to block it? A faraday cage is beyond my budget limit.

I think they are using Ultra Low Frequencies because the former neighbor was in the Navy. He attended the Naval Nuclear Power School back in the 80s. ULF would be used by the navy to communicate with other subs because salt water would make it impossible for the radio waves to travel.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The help you need is medical rather than technical.
Speak to your doctor about this problem.

[Aemilius]

This thread might sound super-paranoid but it is real. There are others on Youtube who seem to have a similar problem.

I have a former neighbor who has been using radio frequencies to eavesdrop on me. They can "listen in" on my thoughts by pointing a beam of some kind of radiation into my room and at my head. (I know this is real. There are things that they know about me that there is no way they could know.) They could be using Extra Low Frequencies or on the other end, microwaves. Is there anyone out there who knows how to detect Extra Low Frequencies. And also how to block it? A faraday cage is beyond my budget limit.

I think they are using Ultra Low Frequencies because the former neighbor was in the Navy. He attended the Naval Nuclear Power School back in the 80s. ULF would be used by the navy to communicate with other subs because salt water would make it impossible for the radio waves to travel.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm curious.... When all this is happening have you ever noticed any planes full of jet fuel circling overhead?   

[evan_au]

It is entirely reasonable to think that others are trying to read your thoughts and intentions.

This is what we all do when we have a conversation or read an email. It is one of the major barriers to building more interactive computers - the difficulty of building a realistic "Theory of Mind".

It is also what groups like NSA, FBI, airport security, Customs & Immigration officers would also like to achieve as they do their work (as well as their counterparts in other countries). In democracies, the scope of their investigations is legally limited to discovering if you are planning activities like a terrorist attack, spying, a bank robbery, or overstaying your visa.

In my opinion, mind reading is normal, essential, and not something you can control, so why worry about it?

You may decide not to fly or travel overseas - and for most people, that is entirely optional. But if this fear starts to interfere with talking to friends, relatives or neighbours, then you should seek medical help.

[RD]

... In my opinion, mind reading is normal ...

The OP, rubystreet, was saying they believed their neighbour could "listen in" to their thoughts via a beam of radiation pointed at their head, not via sound , (what they've said), or vision , (their facial expression / body-language) .

Such "though broadcasting" delusions are typical in schizophrenia-type illness. IMO Rubystreet should discuss this matter with their doctor ASAP, rather than consider this delusional belief "normal".

It would be possible for neighbours to actually overhear ones conversations and possibly intercept ones e-mail, (via Wi-Fi) , but it is completely impossible for a neighbour to perform what amounts to telepathy-type mind-reading.

[rubystreet (OP)]

... In my opinion, mind reading is normal ...

The OP, rubystreet, was saying they believed their neighbour could "listen in" to their thoughts via a beam of radiation pointed at their head, not via sound , (what they've said), or vision , (their facial expression / body-language) .

Such " newbielink:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_broadcasting [nonactive]" delusions are typical in newbielink:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophreniform_disorder [nonactive]. IMO Rubystreet should discuss this matter with their doctor ASAP, rather than consider this delusional belief "normal".

It would be possible for neighbours to actually overhear ones conversations and possibly intercept ones e-mail, (via newbielink:http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043095/heres-what-an-eavesdropper-sees-when-you-use-an-unsecured-wi-fi-hotspot.html [nonactive]) , but it is completely impossible for a neighbour to perform what amounts to telepathy-type mind-reading.

[Obscene language removed! This is your one and only warning. Next time you will be banned. - Mod]

The mind control technology is known as Remote Neural Monitoring. What i have read about this online is that -
The technology employs Satellite-delivered (ELF) Extra Low Frequencies to communicate voice-to-skull transmissions. This produces schizophrenic symptoms. ELF radio signals are used to communicate with Naval Submarines deep below the oceans' surfaces. These frequencies can pinpoint a target anywhere on Earth and can penetrate water, rock, concrete and other dense matter. Consider this, the brain is composed of neurons (wires) and is powered by low electrical currents. Much like insects communicate with non-contact antenna, humans can communicate with radio transceivers.Just like each of us has a unique genetic code (DNA) each of has our own distinct radio frequencies. Find the frequencies and a terror technician can communicate directly to the brain.

Here are some links for more info:
newbielink:http://kassandraproject.wordpress.com/2008/04/12/government-thought-policing-the-nsa-and-remote-neural-monitoring-rnm/ [nonactive]

newbielink:http://www.greatdreams.com/RNM.htm [nonactive]

[RD]

How the f**k would you know anything about it? ...

I know that the delusion that ones thoughts are being broadcast by radio is one commonly suffered by people with schizophrenia ...

Thought broadcasting is considered a positive symptom of schizophrenia. Thought broadcasting has been suggested as one of the so-called "first rank symptoms" (Schneider's first-rank symptoms) believed to distinguish schizophrenia from other psychotic disorders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_broadcasting

Don't rate wikipedia ? , OK , try googling https://www.google.com/search?q=schizophrenia+"Thought+broadcasting"+site:rcpsych.org

[ omit the "+site:rcpsych.org" for even more results ]
 
If technology existed to read peoples mind via radio why does the American government bother spending billions monitoring email and telephone calls , if they could just tune-in to what any person of interest was thinking ?. 

Even if you misinterpreted my previous posts as some sort of insult , which they were not, your reply includes an insane amount of obscenity, which supports what I was saying.

Here are some links for more info: ... http://www.greatdreams.com/RNM.htm

www.greatdreams.com is "compiled by Dee Finney".

[CliffordK]

A couple of your links lead to a case  John St. Clair Akwei vs. NSA.  There is very little additional info about the case online, but it was apparently Filed on 02/20/92 and Dismissed on 03/09/92 with no basis for the claims. 

When you read about psychology, there have been some attempts to scan the brain using fMRI, PET scanning, and arrays of EEG electrodes.  All of the methods either require direct contact to the scalp, or very close proximity of large equipment.  For the most part the scanning methods are incapable of probing memories, but perhaps can give gross generalizations about emotions or current tasks. 

A person would be incapable of monitoring thoughts from across the street. 

[RD]

A couple of your links lead to a case  John St. Clair Akwei vs. NSA.  There is very little additional info about the case online ...

Try googling the phrase "John St. Clair Akwei"+"paranoid schizophrenia"

People with schizophrenia can initiate legal proceedings as well as create conspiracy-theory websites and YouTube videos.

... apparently Filed on 02/20/92 and Dismissed on 03/09/92 with no basis for the claims.

That information will only stimulate paranoid conspiracy theorists rather than dissuade them : government-run judiciary dismisses case against government agency.

[evan_au]

These [Extra Low] frequencies can pinpoint a target anywhere on Earth and can penetrate water, rock, concrete and other dense matter.

Electromagnetic waves cannot pinpoint targets closer than about half the wavelength, even under good conditions.
The frequencies quoted for RNM were 9Hz to 25Hz, which have wavelengths of 30,000km to 10,000km in air, respectively (20,000 to 8,000 miles), which is at least the diameter of the Earth. So there is no way that anybody could be remotely targeting an individual person using these frequencies.

Satellite-delivered (ELF) Extra Low Frequencies to communicate voice-to-skull transmissions.

The Earth is surrounded by the ionosphere, a conductive plasma which reflects ELF radiation. So satellites would not be able to direct energy into the atmosphere at these frequencies.

The Sun is continually battering the ionosphere with the Solar Wind, Coronal Mass Ejections, etc. So the conditions are far from ideal for ELF transmissions generated and received within the atmosphere.

Nerves as Antennas
Signals in nerves propagate down an axon as a depolarisation signal. The structure of this pulse, as a radial current in a cylindrical conductor seems almost designed to minimise external electromagnetic radiation. After all, there is an adjacent axon just micrometers away, and uncontrolled crosstalk would seem to be undesirable. This same effect makes them fairly immune from external radiation.

To be a good antenna, it needs to be at least a quarter wavelength. It is clearly not possible for nerves in our brains or bodies to be a good antenna to transmit or receive signals at ELF. The stations which transmit to submarines use huge amounts of power to generate a very weak signal; your brain does not have this much power.

Modulation
To give a reasonable rendition of voice requires modulation of at least 4kHz, and rough video requires modulation of at least 300kHz. It is not possible to modulate this information on a carrier of 9 to 25Hz.

TransCranial Magnetic Stimulation
During the week I saw a demonstration of Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TCMS), where a local magnetic field is used to stimulate the brain. This did have real impacts on the patient, but rather than applying a defined signal like a voice to the brain, seemed to apply a general disruptive effect to the patient - like being hit with a Taser. This device had to be held against the scalp, and the powerful magnetic fields produced a snapping noise; it is not subtle! Even when enhanced with hundreds of coils, it would still affect large areas of the brain - a very blunt tool, indeed!

Individual Brain Structure
While there are genetic instructions in wiring up the brain (eg the optic nerve at the front connects to the visual cortex at the rear), the precise connections within the brain are formed progressively as the baby, child and adult is exposed to stimuli, which correlate with previous stimuli. So the storage of memories and associations within an individual brain is somewhat random; how it all works is still a mystery for which several governments have allocated a billion dollars in reasearch funds over the next few years. It would require many years of detailed research to deduce the structure of just a single person's brain; being able to stimulate or read particular thoughts in a random person is far beyond our current technology.

Treatment of Schizophrenia
"Voices in the head telling me what to do" is a common symptom of Schizophrenia.
One treatment with some evidence of success involved talking to a therapist about the nature of these voices, and the types of things they were saying.
The therapist then held a conversation with the patient about these topics through headphones, using the same types of intonation, words and topics.  At least in some patients, they were eventually able to reason their way through the negative thoughts that were coming into their heads.

But it all starts with talking to a qualified, independent therapist...
See: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/naked-scientists/show/20130718-1/

[cheryl j]

I hope this isn't an inappropriate question, but I am curious, Rubystreet, why you think your neighbor is so interested in your private thoughts and would go to all of this trouble? What would be his motive or gain? I can't even imagine how bored someone would be eavesdropping on my thoughts. It's hard enough to keep people's interest when I'm talking out loud. I think after misplacing my glasses or cell phone for the fifth time that day, or debating for a half hour whether to make chicken or pasta ( or chicken with pasta, or maybe rice) for dinner, or wondering whether my cat has free will, they would rip their head phones off and say "I can't take it anymore! Someone else spy on this woman!

[evan_au]

The structure of brain and mind (and the relationship between them) are still somewhat of a mystery.

Some theories see the mind as a large number of independent subsystems, working below the level of consciousness, but able to carry out quite complex tasks like walking, reading, recognising a friend in a crowd, a car on the street (or a snake in the grass), remembering the previous time you encountered an odour, listening to one voice in a room full of people, catching a ball, knowing how a friend would react and humming a tune.
All of these independent subsystems are continually clamouring for our attention; or monitoring what we are doing, looking for events that are relevant to the speciality of that subsystem and highlighting relevant inputs.

It is normal to hear a voice in your head. This is what some people call a Stream of Consciousness. It is an executive function that we use to navigate, in an orderly way, through these many competing demands on our attention. It is how we integrate inputs from all these different subsystems, and test the quality and relevance of their inputs based on inputs from other subsystems, experience and education; and extrapolating the likely result of possible actions into the future. Whether we act on these impulses depends on whether we assess the overall result as being better or worse/good or evil.

In dreams (another mystery), our external senses are mostly cut off, and these subsystems generate inputs based on previous states, including the events of the day. During dreams, our executive function is partially disabled, allowing us to "act" on impulses which would not stand up to 2 seconds of scrutiny whilst awake. Fortunately, our muscles are mostly disabled, preventing us from acting out our dreams. Dreams are one way of extrapolating from our experiences, which we sometimes remember consciously if suddenly woken; whether they have a routine impact on our subconscious mental subsystems is yet another mystery.

Where this mental structure verges on illness is if a domineering voice in our head seems to come from an external source, where our executive function is disabled and our impulses are no longer subject to experience, education and extrapolation.

Where illness becomes destructive is where the voice in our head starts producing negative thoughts, and directing us to do things that are predominantly from "the dark side", rather than good.

The neural connections within our brains and bodies exert a far stronger influence on our mental state than external radio waves. This is why we test and monitor new technologies (like microwave radar transmitters and mobile phones) to discover any adverse effects, and to ensure they are operated at power levels which are safe for the public. With our current technology, we cannot detect or insert words or images into a persons brain remotely - even direct electrical connection like a cochlear implant requires considerable cooperation, training and interpretation by a motivated, living brain.

So if you feel that the voice in your head is no longer under your control, or is overwhelmingly negative and critical, you should seek counseling help.

[cheryl j]

Very well said, Evan_au.

[dlorde]

Am I the target of Remote Neural Monitoring?

No.

[cheryl j]

In addition to the sensation of "there's someone in my head, and it's not me" I've read that schizophrenia might involve altered pattern recognition. In laboratory testing, there are both false negatives and false positive results that decrease accuracy in tests. Likewise, while some people might fail to recognize patterns when they are there (false negative), others may see patterns in random events, or attribute the wrong cause or meaning to patterns (false positive). That happens even in normal people, eg, superstitions, magical thinking.

[RD]

... others may see patterns in random events ...

There's a word for it ...

The term is attributed to Klaus Conrad by Peter Brugger, who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness" ... apophany does not provide insight into the true nature of reality or its interconnectedness, but is a "process of repetitively and monotonously experiencing abnormal meanings in the entire surrounding experiential field",

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

[cheryl j]

I think are brains are wired to look for patterns and pay attention to coincidences, because sometimes they are significant. It reminds me of a certain kind of coincidence, which coincidentally, my daughter mentioned the other day. She said "Have you ever been reading something, and the second you get to a word or phrase on the page, someone in the room or on TV says the exact same thing?" Which has happened to me, and it does feel weird. "How does that happen?" she asked. I said, "I guess if you're an avid reader, and reading 1000s of words every day, and there's usually someone in the room, or a tv or a radio on in the back ground, there's bound to be a match up eventually." But it is like the word or phrase just pops out at you, where as it would have flowed right past, hardly registering, without the pairing.

[dlorde]

I think are brains are wired to look for patterns and pay attention to coincidences, because sometimes they are significant. It reminds me of a certain kind of coincidence, which coincidentally, my daughter mentioned the other day. She said "Have you ever been reading something, and the second you get to a word or phrase on the page, someone in the room or on TV says the exact same thing?" Which has happened to me, and it does feel weird. "How does that happen?" she asked. I said, "I guess if you're an avid reader, and reading 1000s of words every day, and there's usually someone in the room, or a tv or a radio on in the back ground, there's bound to be a match up eventually." But it is like the word or phrase just pops out at you, where as it would have flowed right past, hardly registering, without the pairing.

Yes; we are extremely good at finding patterns in our experiences, even when the data is random, and we are 'tuned' to notice the unusual. A coincidence is unusual, so we notice it, but we fail to notice all the events which were not coincidences (because there's nothing to notice). What would really be surprising would be to not notice any interesting coincidences - the law of large numbers suggests we should notice them regularly.

Our innate innumeracy concerning large numbers and probability causes us to pose the wrong questions about coincidences - we ask "what were the odds of that coincidence happening?" (often very small), rather than "what were the odds of any coincidence happening?" (typically quite large). So when we hear, for example, that someone has won a lottery twice, instead of being amazed because we calculate the odds of some particular individual winning twice as the chance of one ticket squared - incredibly unlikely, the newspapers love to claim odds like '1 in 17 trillion', and other amazing figures - we should instead consider the odds of anyone winning the lottery twice, and multiply by the number of lotteries out there. In the US, this comes out at odds of around 1 in 30 over a four month period, and about evens over a seven year period (low also because many players buy more than one ticket to more than one lottery).