Do-It-Yourself Brain Stimulation Has Scientists Worried 311
Freshly Exhumed writes "Dave Siever always fancied himself as something of a musician, but also realized he did not necessarily sing or play in perfect key. Then he strapped on the electrodes of a device made by his Edmonton company, and zapped his brain's auditory cortex with a mild dose of electricity. The result, he claims, was a dramatic improvement in his ability to hear pitch, including the sour notes he produced himself. 'Now I tune everything and I practise my singing over and over and over again, because I'm more sensitive to it.' Mr. Siever was not under the supervision of a doctor or psychologist, and nor is he one himself. He is part of an extraordinary trend that has amateur enthusiasts excited, and some scientists deeply nervous: do-it-yourself brain stimulation." With studies suggesting that small doses of electricity can: increase your memory, help you learn new tasks, make you better at math, turn you into a sniper in minutes, and most importantly make the ugly seem attractive, we can expect a lot of brain zapping in the next few years.
Open Research... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is great so long as everything is published as they go. Waveforms, Impulse frequency or duration, Pulse train frequency, electrode placements, signal voltage and current. Don't let this get taken over by the industrialists. :)
Also, publish your data BEFORE you use the signal. If you die, we need to know what did it.
The only question I have is: (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked for a company the built medical diagnostic (EEG & ECG) and treatment (TENS) equipment. We had a few prototype stimulation units that one salesman had the bright idea of connecting up to his brain. It's output was really limited (on the order of a few micro amps) using electrodes attached to his ear-lobes. Turn it on with a low frequency sine wave (1 - 2 Hz) and watch the fun. It was interesting to watch his eyes scan back and forth like a Cylon. The sign wave was super-imposed on the normal impulses, so he could still direct his eyes, but really funny if he was trying to keep his eyes focused on one thing.
I have no doubt that he was doing damage along the way (but hell, he was only a salesman). He claimed that it made him feel high. The stupid bastard was even driving his car with the thing hooked up.
However, you can have all manor of fun with a good TENS unit.
Wow.
Re:Open Research... (Score:5, Interesting)
This approach has killed the space program.
exploration is done by bold people who die
Sir, I politely call your attention to the 30 astronauts and cosmonauts who lost their lives in spaceflight and training, and to whom we owe the space program's continued successes around the globe. These men and women gladly risked their lives to advance science and technology and they are heroes, every one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_disasters [wikipedia.org]
Re:The old is new again (Score:4, Interesting)
That being said, no amount of money would get me to stick it anywhere near my head. Shudder. The machine I got is capable of making your muscles rip themselves apart. If you overestimate when you increase the power, you effectively taze yourself. The only good thing is you know there's a rest period in a few seconds so you can stop it. It hurts. A LOT. I know.
Re:Open Research... (Score:4, Interesting)
I concur with your caution that peoples' brains differ, so we might expect that YMMV regarding the results of TCDS. I disagree that "When actual scientists do this they do multiple high resolution MRIs...". That's the exception, not the rule.
In my collection of 108 papers on TCDS, use of advanced imaging methods as a study enrollment screener happened in 7 of them. The technology seems (so far, anyway) pretty benign. For example, in one study of 815 TCDS sessions in 100 migraine patients, there were no observed adverse events ("Safety of the transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS): evaluation of 815 tDCS sessions in 100 chronic- pain patients"). Not to say that it's free of risk, nor that longer-term adverse effects won't crop up, but for those who stay within the generally used current density limits, etc., there probably isn't a lot to worry about.
I'm much more concerned about people deciding that a 9v battery is just so inconvenient, they'll run it off that 9v wall wart. The one with the failed ground isolation. The really cheap one that fails in a way that puts line voltage on the scalp electrodes just when the user happens to touch a grounded thing. etc. Some think that because they can buy a case and motherboard at Fry's and boot Windows, they're a biomedical EE. These folks may get selected out, or become somewhat dimmer bulbs.
Re:Which part of the brain do you need to zap to (Score:4, Interesting)
...make you think it's a really good idea to zap vague areas of your brain with electricity based on the hilariously incomplete field of neuroscience?
Yeah, it's really dumb, but so is sniffing glue, or using meth, or cocaine, or smoking cigarettes, or any of several dozen other unhealthy habits you could name.
There are plenty of people out their who are willing to ignore any amount of long-term consequences in return for a short-term reward.
Firsthand experience with surface stimulation (Score:5, Interesting)
About 80% of the electrodes were actually kind of boring. They would produce a characteristic speckling somewhere in the leftward field of view at a certain radius and angle. Other electrodes made very weird stuff appear. One caused everything on the left side of the room to suddenly look extremely brightly hued. It looked like a grocery aisle with cheap fruit drinks. The colors got more intense with additional current.
There was a problem near the end with a bunch of uncomfortable hallucinations. Every tiny little point from the pulse generator had this upsetting weird look to it, like a kitten with its head crushed. They somehow weren't going away, and I started bitching about something seeming to accumulate in my field of vision.
They told me at this point that my brain wasn't correctly grounded to the bed frame. I wasn't able to ground it myself since all I could reach on the bed was plastic. As soon as they regrounded it, for a split second I saw some sort of bright thunderbolt approach from the left and sweep all the stuff away. It felt like a relief somehow but I'm not sure WTF I was seeing.
Re:Which part of the brain do you need to zap to (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely. Hell, I will confess right now. If it would cause a euphoric/high state then I'd certainly try it. I've tried all sorts of other things (many of them bad for me) and I still even happily pursue some of those substances to this day. It is a trade off though. Why would I want to live forever if I'm not having a good time? My brain is wired so that I'm generally not having a good time so I self-medicate and enjoy life, my time here, and I accept that it may well kill me at some point.
My personal preferences, should you care, are opiates. I am a big fan. I also smoke weed but that's probably not all that harmful. I am also no longer in a position where I need to be responsible, I avoid operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, and I'm not needing to commit any criminal offenses (other than acquisition and use of said narcotics) to maintain my lifestyle. So, yeah, it is a choice in my case and it is better than the variety of prescribed things that were supposed to make me happy. As near as I can tell the side effects and health risks are actually less and lower than they were with the prescribed stuff.
You remember that commercial back in the early 1980s about how nobody wants to be a junky when they grow up? They were lying. Lots of people want to be. Lots of people choose to be. There's a pretty sizable percentage of the population who uses but you only notice the ones who can't do so and remain functional. You only see or hear about the ones on the street corner or living in a box. They're actually a pretty small subset of users. They probably also have other issues than abuse or addiction issues. They get the spotlight because, well, frankly it's illegal and there's a social stigma attached which means we're not exactly going to go out and interview for television shows and newspapers. Many of us function just fine with families, friends, careers, and lives.
Is it dumb? I don't think I would go that far and make that accusation. I'd say it is a choice. Some of us have no desire to live for as long as we physically can. We see no point in it. Some of us would rather worry more about quality than quantity. You can drive your Honda Accord life (it's nice enough, it's reliable, it is safe, and it makes you happy) while there are others who want to have our BMW 740ils (we have style, live fast, cost a lot more, pick up the cute chicks, are fun, and it makes us happy). The idea that we should try to prolong our lives for as long as we can is foolish, selfish, and ignorant in my opinion. Quality over quantity, any day. So long as we're not causing harm to others then I fail to see where the idea that it is dumb (or wrong, or unethical) comes into play.
I don't blame people for thinking that way though. They've been brainwashed into that line of thought for their entire lives. We're taught that we should live healthy and long lives. We're taught that we should eschew mind altering substances. We're told that we should OBEY THE LAW! We're taught that thinking for ourselves is wrong. So, yeah, I understand people who would follow society's rules. I understand that but I don't personally subscribe to such. I'd rather experience what I can today more than I'd rather wonder about life could have been while sitting damned near useless in a nursing home bed. And yeah, I'm old. These aren't the sentiments of youthful ideology. They're the expressions of someone who's experienced it, given it great thought, made his own choices, lived according to those choices, and has had great success with his method.
What you, personally, do or believe is entirely up to you but I'd hardly call it dumb just because you don't understand it. That seems a little lacking if you ask me. I suppose it is instinct to call it dumb if you don't understand it or have been taught to think a different way so, really, I don't blame you. I'd think the same thing too if I hadn't dared look on the other side of the curtain and think it through for myself.
Re:Which part of the brain do you need to zap to (Score:5, Interesting)
Cheaper, too. This was a significant point in Niven's fictional universe: those people who were inclined to try some recreational pleasure-stimulation would become wireheads rather than buying drugs. Pay once for the operation to install the wire; after that, all you need to pay for is a trickle of electric power. None of the crime associated with drugs: there's not enough money in it to interest dealers, and the addicts don't need to turn to crime to pay for their fix.
Since wireheads tended not to breed (how can sex compare to wireheading?), a bit of rapid evolution went on: a few centuries later, the sort of pleasure-seeking that leads to drug use was a very rare trait in humanity.
Re:Open Research... (Score:4, Interesting)
By the way... how many people do you think died settling the eastern colonies of the america (not counting the native americans who they killed sooner or later)?
How many settling the midwest? The west?
Entire groups died to the last person.
If sending up a rocket with 98% safety vs 99% safety safety costs 1x, 10x, -- think how many you could send to space by accepting 2 failures per hundred launches instead of 1 failure per hundred launches.
Over 100 people died in the construction of the Hoover Dam.
Five workers died constructing the empire state building.
We had 3 people die on our SAP software project plus multiple heart attacks and divorces.
At least space means something compared to implementing a software package that won't probably be used in 30 years.
We don't need extremely expensive heroes- we need construction workers to throw stuff up into space cheap. We need a moon base extracting materials before the legal and financial hurdles get so great we end up stuck here.