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The God Helmet is a popular name given to a laboratory apparatus more correctly called the "Koren Helmet", after Stanley Koren of Laurentian University's Neuroscience Department, who built it according to specifications provided by Dr. M.A. Persinger, it's director.

Used as a research tool to investigate the brain's role in religious and mystic experiences, the Koren Helmet has been given the name God Helmet. A few Journalists gave it this name when they learned that some people had visions of God while participating in Koren Helmet experiments. The name has stuck.

The Koren Helmet applies complex (having an irregular shape) magnetic signals to the head of the person who is wearing it. The fields don't work by inducing current in the brain. They have patterns that bear information, and magnetic fields that appear from the electrical activity in the brain pick up the information.
It's a field-to-field interaction, and not current induction. The fields pass into the brain, unaffected by the scalp or skull, because there is no such thing as a magnetic insulator. Nothing can block a magnetic field 1 2. Some psychologists, not understanding this, have mistakenly claimed that the fields used in the God Helmet aren't strong enough to reach the brain. Magnetic fields pass "through all head structures with no attenuation and can stimulate the brain without discomfort" reference. Further Discussion.
The Koren Helmet is connected to a PC computer through a 'black box' that cycles the signals through four coils on each side of the head, above over the place where the temporal lobes of the brain meet the parietal lobes. This is the area of the brain many researchers feel is the source of spiritual and religious experiences link.

This illustration shows how the signal shifts from one coil to the next. This is a side view. There is also another set of coils working on the other side. The two coils at the top are no longer used.

The sessions are done in an Acoustic Chamber - a completely silent room. A large part of the temporal lobes ongoing activity is dedicated to monitoring ambient sound. The temporal lobes are the source of religious and mystic experiences, so that silence helps a great deal in creating them in the lab. The same chamber also has a layer of electromagnetic insulation, so that the ambient energy emitted from lab equipment, cell phone towers, and computer monitors is screened out. Because magnetic fields can still pass through this fields screen (a Faraday Cage), the God Helmet research has included some interesting discoveries about the earth's magnetic field.