Visconti 2000 offers Brainy Cantabridgians Mind Over Matter

Cambridge residents have got it rough. The object of many a national joke, they've had to put up for decades with reputations for crunchy liberalness and weird New Age experimentation.

No more. When things get too tough, Cantabrigians can drop by their local Visconti 2000 Center for Peak Performance and Neuro-Sensory Development, say goodbye to the world, and find their Zone.

Sit back in a sleek black reclining chair, get fitted with futuristic goggles and headphones, and let yourself be carried to a more balanced state of consciousness. Electronic blips bounce between your ears, tiny strobe lights flash into your eyes and scientifically created static fills your head.

Before you know it, you're on your way to the Zone--a sense of inner well-being, and a finely-tuned, pumped-up brain.

And through it all, the center's founder, Maryellen Visconti, coaches your "MIND/BRAIN workout." Her equipment, a roomful of electronic light and sound machines using '21st century technology," are the tools for her MindMax System. According to Visconti, her system is the only one of its kind in the world.

Businessmen and Brains

Located on the third floor of the Porter Exchange in Porter Square, Visconti's center, furnished with space-age sofas and chairs, caters mostly to male businessmen in their twenties and thirties. Customers have also included some Harvard and MIT students, who are willing to shell out $35 for a half hour session in order to, as the center puts it, "get in the Flow."

Visconti, a public relations expert, says her electronic workout makes people better prepared for today's tense world. She charges $450 for a four-week series (or $950 for eight weeks) of sessions and seminars with her MindMax system, which aim at bringing customers into their Zones.

The paths to the Zones are many. The MC2 Program, for example, is a goggles-and-head-phones workout coded to match human brain waves. The program in its entirety is a 15-minute experience.

Another option is to stick your head in the "Lumatron," which will improve your peripheral vision and fine-tune your hand-eye coordination.

And that's not all. For just $20, you can bring Visconti 2000 home with you: a tape of static that matches the brain waves you need to do anything from playing tennis to memorizing vocabulary. For those trying to tone their brain waves down, there are mellowing tapes of the sounds of surf.

On any store visit, one can also get her or his mind mapped by a computer, or have a conference with Visconti herself, who teaches the secrets to coping with the modern world.

Doubting Toms

Of course, not everyone agrees that "getting in the Flow" is as easy as Visconti says. Her futuristic system of brain development and electronically accelerated learning have come under attack by doubting academics, the national media and even the federal government.

"So many of these things are so far-fetched," says Harvard's Assistant Professor of Psychology Todd F. Heatherton, who has never studied Visconti's system, but is aware of her process and technology. "There is no reason why flashing strobe lights at a person would help them learn. Just studying makes so much more sense," he says.

The National Research Council too (NRC) has been studying this technology for years. Dr. John Swets, who headed a 1988 NRC investigation of accelerated learning for the U.S. Army, concludes that the "neurolinguistic perception" (NLP) goggles and headphones--which centers such as Visconti's use--have little scientific proof of their effectiveness.

"Overall, there is little or no empirical evidence to date to support either NLP assumptions or NLP effectiveness," continues Swets. "After 10 years of informal research, there is little scientific support for even the mild claims of two-to threefold improvements."

Visconti 2000 was also the object of a Wall Street Journal front-page attack in April of 1990. The Journal characterized Visconti's center as part of a disguised New Age movement. These critics say the technology never developed from New Age exuberance into documented science. Rather, they charge that what began as part of the human-possibilities excitement of the 1960s has simply become an individual money-making strategy of the 1980s.

A '90s Elmer Gantry?

So is Visconti just an Elmer Gantry of the New Age? She says no. "This technology came out of the New Age milieu," she says, "and many found this to be interesting and entertaining." She adds, firmly, however, "I found it wasn't just 'interesting.'"

Indeed, Visconti insists that such criticism is both innacurate and dangerous. Recent studies have shown that her processes have significant effect in accelerating learning, and are especially helpful in cases of learning disabilities, such as dyslexia.

"It's really critical," she explains, "because we're finally getting the documentation from solid research that it plays a significant role [in these respects]."

And Visconti says she has documents to back her up--the federal government granted patents to two psychologists for the light and sound machines they invented for Visconti, and have acknowledged their effectiveness, she says. Visconti also points to newsletters of organizations which she says place her work on the cutting edge of new technology.

Swets, however, counters Visonti, "They have societies, publish journals and have some structure so that when they find contradictory evidence, they don't just roll over."

According to Swets, many of the researchers from whom Visconti compiles evidence are discredited by the NRC. Two of these people who Visconticites are mind researcher Tony Buzan and Rumanian "suggestopedia" theorizer Dr. Georgi Lozanov. Suggestopedia, says Lozanov, increases at least 25 times our memorization abilities.

No Flat Out Rejection

Swets does, however, find some value in Visconti's systems. "We compliment these folks on trying to be innovative," he says. "We're not going to accept their hypotheses, but we're not going to reject them, either."

An assistant professor in Nutrition and Media at Boston University's School of Health Sciences, Visconti measures success through pre and post-tests, and cites as proof of her system's effectiveness the relaxation of those who perform the workout. She points to golfer Rocky Thompson, who claimed in The Boston Globe that the light and sound goggles helped him relax for his golf tournaments.

So, despite the doubting Toms, firm in her commitment to her innovative technology, says she will continue to help people reach their intellectual peaks. And so, deep in the heart of the Porter Exchange, Visconti contiues to search for what she calls, "the Future Human."

And with that, what may be Cambridge's most offbeat resource will continue to offer 21st-century relief to businesspeople, Harvard students and stressed-out Cantabrigians, fighting against their all-too-famous reputation for lunacy.