I am fascinated by brain hacking.<p>That said, a routine of high-quality sleep, daily exercise, nutritious food, mindfulness meditation, and limited caffeine use will do far more for the average person – with substantially less risk.
I used to do lot of DIY neurostimulation, until one day I accidentally stimulated the part of my brain that made lose interest in it.<p>Intellectually, I know I should just unstimulate that part but meh.
The search for a magical panacea continues. I'm sure there's some beneficial discoveries that will come out of this research, but I don't think it's going to elevate you to a "mystic" state by strapping electrodes to your head.<p>My guess: at best these "neurohackers" will accomplish nothing other than some good times socializing with each other (good for them), at worst they'll hurt themselves.
I thought that tDCS was already debunked as problematic since it increases neuroplasticity at the cost of information retention.<p>So yes, it can be used to accelerate skill learning for skill dependant people but can be (and is) detrimental for knowledge workers
Have they invented the Tasp (<a href="http://larryniven.wikia.com/wiki/Tasp" rel="nofollow">http://larryniven.wikia.com/wiki/Tasp</a>) yet?<p><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=235788" rel="nofollow">http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=235788</a>
The article mentions that it's mostly men between the ages of 21 and 30 who use neurostimulatory devices. I know I've been tempted to try.<p>Maybe this is silly, but I view this as evidence of societal sickness. Young men are pushed so hard to be the very best at whatever they do that they are willing to use unproven, unsafe technology to alter their biology to give them an edge.<p>Sure, if you asked them they'd say that they wanted to be smarter for smartness' sake, but I doubt it's true.
Why do we have any reason to believe that there's any electrical field inside the brain at all? The skin is reasonably conductive, bone is not. Do we have any proof that the current doesn't just run along the skin taking the path of least resistance? The is the one part of transcranial electrical stimulation that I've never understood - there doesn't seem to be any proof it does what people say it does.
I was wondering if there would be any sort of discussion regarding pain relief a la TENs unit approach, which I haven't tried, but it doesn't look to be part of the article. Chronic lower back pain is such a market I kind of hope more devices keep getting created to address the issue. In fairness there's still a lot of barely substantiated / anecdotal evidence with most of the stuff out there (inversion therapy, TENs) and the one arena that should be helpful (chiro) but can be conflated with new-age rigmarole.