The 404 - Ep. 1480: Where we shock ourselves silly

Zapping your brain with spark plugs to improve your videogaming skills and other tales of transhumanism on the rise; inside Jack White's plan to singlehandedly bring music back to vinyl; a startup that encourages SF residents to auction their parking spaces; and Nintendo skims deeper into financial sludge.

[Sahl-Amander]

Great show! Keep up the good work guys!

[rmckz]

Gentlemen, Thanks for discussing this article and topic. I do professional research with tDCS. I can assure you actual scientist who do work with this have proven this is not a placebo effect. Recent work from the air force shows tDCS can have similar if not greater effects than caffeine on vigilance. Our own lab has show good effects on learning and increased signal detection with tDCS. However that all being said while we know that the current gets to your brain based on our best modeling efforts it is true no one actually know 100% how tDCS works. Markov Biksom has done some of the best work looking at it's effects in vitro. When we use this technology we use cognitive neuroscience and task specific imaging to help us configure our tDCS montage, amateurs are just slapping the electrodes anywhere, and stemming for periods of time far longer than we are allowed within the experimental setting. It is these two issues which are potentially dangerous or not actually leading to effective use of the equipment.

[lapamful]

RE: brain shock stimulus

I'm glad you guys spent a lot of time on the possible side-effects.

Is there anyone out there CRAZY enough to try this on their brains?!!?

Not even the most knowledgeable brain surgeon knows everything about the brain and how it works. How the hell does anyone know the full effects of this??

Let me give you some ideas: the eyes don't see, they capture light. It's the brain that makes sense of it all. Same with hearing. The ears capture sounds, but it's the brain that processes everything into recognisable sounds. The same with taste... etc. etc.

Imagine if those started going wrong?

There are PROVEN ways of improving cortical skills, such as chess, those mobile phone games that improve the brain, learning to play a musical instrument... Improve your brain organically, but don't send electricity through it until more research on this is done!

Would be great if you brought in a psychiatrist to talk about this more.

Thanks