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+ - The Addictive Potential of Brain Hacking with tDCS-> 4

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ideonexus
ideonexus writes "New Scientist author Sally Adee has a fascinating blogpost up about her personal experiences with using Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation (tDCS), the act of conducting an electric current through the brain, to learn marksmanship with an assault rifle for an article she wrote, and talks about how much she longed to put the electrodes back on a few days later after the effects had worn off. With tDCS devices now available for sale with a prescription and DIYers posting instructions for building your own (see also here), are geeks on the precipice of a revolutionary and potentially addictive new brain hack?"
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The Addictive Potential of Brain Hacking with tDCS More

The Addictive Potential of Brain Hacking with tDCS

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  • In other news, wearing copper bracelets can reduce the severity of seasickness. The author of the (rather hyperventilating) blog post says that passing a current through her brain removed self-doubt. But that is also typical of placebo-effect enhancement, like decorative armor.
    • I was hoping people would RTFA before coming to that sort of snap judgement seeing as how the articles reference this [mendeley.com] and this [cgpublisher.com] peer-reviewed articles. Of course more research is needed, but if these studies didn't account for the placebo affect, they wouldn't have been published.
      • The second article you cite seems basically to be a product placement advertisement. In the blog post it was not explained how superficial electrodes are supposed to direct current to particular locations through the skull and other tissue. There is a big difference between this kind of work and open-skull stimulation.

        Of course I could be quite wrong, but medical research is notoriously poor in experimental design and the reliability of results, and my suspicion arises because there is no proposed mechanism

        • Fair enough. Actually, your comment is the kind of intelligent commentary is why I submitted this article to /. in hopes of learning more about it. You've given me some serious food for thought, and I'll take the points you make as things to research further on this subject. Thank you!

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