• cantalopes 29 minutes ago

    It looks like a fun toy and i don't mean to disrespect but isn't this kind of a snake oil that's bordrline with placebo?

    I mean, strobing light at specific hz will definitely have some effect on increased hz activity in your brain somewhat, and perhaps even relax me, but whether would that translate to "deep work" or just flshing light in my face would vary from person to person. And the gained benefits would be probably very dimnishing (like the whole "premium bineural beats" scams)

    Plus the "unlock pro for targeted emotional regulation" souns veeeeery far fetched and fishy.

    But if it gets popular i'm pretty sure some people would buy it (hell, people buy "good energy stones for good aura" to protect from reptilians or something)

    • dvh 2 hours ago

      ERROR> https://phantas.io/_next/static/chunks/f60f633011df6d3a.js(5...: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'cancel')

      • AphantaZach 2 hours ago

        Good catch. That’s an unguarded speechSynthesis call in the cleanup function. likely crashing on browsers that block the Speech API (or in privacy mode).

        Just pushed a fix to wrap it in a conditional check. It should be live in ~2 minutes. Thanks for the stack trace!

      • aeon_ai 2 hours ago

        Any evidence supporting “higher performance”?

        • AphantaZach 2 hours ago

          Totally fair question. "Higher performance" is definitely a subjective claim, so I should clarify the mechanism I'm relying on.

          The core concept is Photic Driving (the "Frequency Following Response"). There is decent literature (e.g., Herrmann, 2001) showing that the visual cortex effectively synchronizes its firing rate to match high-amplitude external flickers (like a 14Hz strobe).

          My goal with this tool is to induce Transient Hypofrontality (down-regulation of the prefrontal cortex), which is often associated with "Flow States" (Dietrich, 2003).

          To be clear: I haven't run a clinical trial. I built it to replicate the "Ganzflicker" effects (Reeder, 2021) in a browser environment to help with my own Aphantasia. Subjectively, it helps me clear cognitive noise faster than silence, but I'm releasing it for free to see if that holds true for others or if it's just placebo.