Brain Activator​

​

​In the early 1950s, Prof. Alfred Tomatis started to build a device that would provide therapeutic support to his research in hearing and phonetics. In 1958, he presented his device at the World's Fair in Brussels and received a Gold Medal. Tomatis came up with the name 'Electronic Ear' for his device during a conversation with a journalist. He immediately prohibited the replication of his invention, so the therapists he trained had to purchase and use his equipment. Until the year 2000, the Atlantis Institute used only the Tomatis equipment.

​

Jozef Vervoort, also a student of Tomatis, had a number of ideas for expanding the functions of the Electronic Ear, such as voice improvement, among others. Vervoort tried using available devices, but did not really make any progress. So, he sought help for the technical implementation of his ideas. Two collaborators from the University of Limburg backed his project, but when a few years later they demanded a lot of money for development and a guaranteed purchase of many devices. Vervoort declined.

​

A coincidence put him on the path of a professor from the Ruhr region, in Northern Germany, who taught at the Dortmund Technical University. They teamed up with a final-year student and a company in Witten, and by the early 2000s the first Brain Activator was completed. Before the start of development in 1999, Jozef Vervoort discussed all his ideas for the new device with Alfred Tomatis. The founder of the therapy that bears his name gave his consent to, for example, the possibility to soften the strict 1000 Hz frequency switch in order to reach other areas of the brain, as well as to the 24-bit sound quality.

​

Jozef Vervoort and his collaborators gathered many ideas for improvement, especially to facilitate their daily work. The versatility of the device became apparent in 1996 when a stutterer came to the Sint-Truiden Centre, hoping for a cure. He was eventually helped. With a latency of 687 milliseconds, the delay between heard and spoken words disappeared and his stuttering was gone.

​

The best evidence of the development and progress of the equipment can be found at Mozart Brain Lab. The oldest 'Electronic Ear' built by Tomatis dates back to 1972. The prototype of the Brain Activator is a very heavy device with many connections. The newer devices are ideally suited to modern therapy.

The settings of the special headphones used for therapy, as well as the music from Mozart, Gregorian chant and mother's voice, are modified via a special electronically-controlled amplifier and filter system. The neurological effect of the stimulation results in improved auditory perception and a re-organization of the auditory processing.

​

Jozef Vervoort has other ideas to improve the Brain Activator in the future. "I want to achieve even more with the therapy and especially take it to an even higher level," he says.