Hoyt Banks

PR-AYC-G is an exploratory psychophysiology protocol designed to test whether meaningful narrative produces measurable autonomic and EEG-state changes beyond shared audiovisual stimulation and beyond task-driven analytic control. The protocol compares three conditions generated from a single stimulus suite: a phase-scrambled control intended to preserve low-level audiovisual timing while removing recognizable meaning; an intact high-meaning narrative watched naturally; and the same intact narrative viewed under an analytic contextual-override task. The current v1.6M implementation adds standardized media preparation, cue-embedded target/override videos, phase-scrambled control generation, stimulus fingerprinting, synchronized Lab Streaming Layer markers, respiration tracking, HRV, EEG, self-report, and a master post-processing suite. Four complete single-participant feasibility runs were analyzed using OpenBCI EEG, Polar H10 R-R intervals, LSL/event markers, and post-block ratings. The original stimulus-window theta-synchrony hypothesis was refined after analysis. Immediate theta-band effects were mixed, while post-target washout carryover, indexed as PNCC θ, appeared more promising than stimulus-window theta elevation. Across the four complete self-runs, post-target washout exceeded post-control washout by sign, and Target 1 repeatedly showed a lower heart-rate profile than control and contextual override. A subsequent spectral scan found that lower-gamma power, initially defined as 30–45 Hz, was higher in Target 1 than contextual override by sign across the four runs, whereas theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling did not reliably distinguish Target from override. Later method-development runs constrained this interpretation. Cue-embedded contextual override demonstrated that analytic running-sum tasks can themselves increase gamma power, phase-locking, and task-lock structure. The updated model therefore rejects the simple equation “lower-gamma equals meaning.” Instead, gamma is treated as a biological work signal composed of separable contributors: meaning-related processing, analytic task load, visual delivery, threat/salience, artifact, and residual noise. The revised analysis framework, GammaScalpel, subdivides 30–45 Hz into micro-bands, evaluates spatial ROI patterns, separates power from phase-locking, and penalizes artifact-sentinel, respiration, and task-load explanations. PR-AYC-G v1.6M therefore frames narrative meaning as a candidate state-transition process rather than a single-frequency biomarker. The next-stage model searches for dimensionless transition parameters: how much frontoparietal task-lock must release, how the aperiodic spectral slope shifts, how long post-stimulus after-state persists, and how autonomic state returns to baseline after meaning. These findings are preliminary, single-participant, exploratory, and artifact-sensitive. They do not establish a mechanism of consciousness, quantum biology, or metaphysical interpretation. They motivate a preregistered replication using locked channel maps, EOG/EMG, respiration, motion controls, validated cue-based override scoring, media-fingerprint QC, and artifact-matched analysis windows to test whether meaningful narrative produces reproducible biological state trajectories beyond sensory input and analytic task demand. This version keeps the three-arm structure clear: scrambled sensory control, intact target, and the same intact narrative under analytic task demand. It also preserves the boundary that self-report is an independent evidence stream, not proof of internal state by itself.

Hoyt Thomas Banks

Independent Researcher from Stilwell, Kansas.