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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Researchers have finally found a way to make people smarter, but it's not pleasant ScienceAlert... As we learn more and more about the brain, we're getting better at figuring out how to supercharge it. One of the most promising and at this point, popular ways (at least, among a certain community of mostly-DIY body-hackers) to directly charge up our mental abilities involves headsets that direct electric or magnetic pulses at specific regions of the brain. Brain stimulation is not a new technique. Neuroscientists have been experimenting with various forms of brain stimulation in its modern form for at least 15 years. But now, due to both a growing body of available how-to knowledge and the ability to purchase brain-stimulating devices off the internet, the devices that can do this work are more accessible than ever before. More importantly, more and more research confirms that a bit of electric or magnetic stimulation really can make a difference. "Indeed, electrical as well as magnetic stimulation shows promise in the enhancement of cognitive functions," Ruairidh Battleday and Anna-Katherine Brem, Oxford scientists who research techniques and drugs that can boost brainpower, told Tech Insider in an email. What happens when you wire up your mind Today, brain stimulation has become so popular that on July 7, researchers published an open letter in the journal Annals of Neurology cautioning DIY users about some of the risks involved in stimulating the brain. Basically, stimulation involves targeting specific brain regions with these pulses in order to quiet some mental processes and to activate or enhance others. There's good evidence that doing so can improve memory, pattern recognition, the ability to pay attention, mathematical abilities, and more. Research has also shown that stimulation may boost athletic performance too, by making athletes feel less fatigued. And that's just the start of what we're getting to know about stimulation's cognitive enhancement benefits in healthy people. But as Battleday and Brem explained, only a small bit of research has focused on what stimulation does to healthy populations - there's still far more to learn there. From a medical perspective, researchers have found stimulation can be a treatment for depression, anxiety, and other disorders. That's pretty powerful. But for now at least, most of our efforts to target specific brain regions, many of which we are still identifying, are not very accurate. Brain stimulation "is more of a shotgun approach than a scalpel approach," Michael Weisend, a neuroscientist at Wright State Research Institution, told me in November of 2014. And those indirectly or inaccurately targeted regions might usually be harmless, but not always. As the open letter from worried researchers explained, users might: Alter brain regions they didn't intend to touch. Have different reactions to stimulation depending on what they are doing at the time. If you are reading a book, your brain does different things than if you were watching TV or playing a video game. The same pulse may have different effects depending on what's happening in your brain. Boost one ability that comes with an unexpected trade-off, where another mental process is sacrificed. It's still early days for this science, and they want to caution users that they shouldn't treat this stuff lightly (if you don't know what you are doing, this is not a safe thing to play around with). Researchers like Weisend tell self-experimenters to steer clear until we know things are safe. But the potential that we see so far is fascinating. The future of brain Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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