
Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus - fuzzix
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328501.600-zap-your-brain-into-the-zone-fast-track-to-pure-focus.html
======
kghose
I'm really trying to get a grip on trans-cranial electric stimulation. The
specificity of effects claimed from from such a general manipulation (enhanced
learning, better mathematical skills) is a little unbelievable.

Statements like "warns me that if I remove an electrode and break the
connection, the voltage passing through my brain will blind me for a good few
seconds." which may be a misreporting, don't help to bolster credibility. It
may indeed blind you due to some neurophysiological effect, but breaking the
connection of a direct current circuit will simply stop the current (unless
there is a huge inductor in the circuit somewhere, in which case there will be
a spark to your scalp as the SAME current tries to keep flowing).

~~~
fuzzix
"Statements like "warns me that if I remove an electrode and break the
connection, the voltage passing through my brain will blind me for a good few
seconds." which may be a misreporting"

Could be, could be what the fella actually said - if someone did say that to
me I'd be less inclined to allow them apply electrodes to me... and that's the
professional.

The amateurs (as linked from the article) are burning themselves...

From <http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=7943>

"it actually burnt though the skin and left bruise marks. i hope it's gonna go
after few days coz i look really silly"

Yeah, I think I'll give it a miss, thanks.

~~~
draggnar
seems like they used copper coins and no resistor, not surprised that they
would burn themselves.

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plf
I know it's probably harmless, but this is one of those things that I rather
wait before trying it out. You never know, there could be very small hidden
side effects. The brain is so complex and poorly understood that I rather not
mess with it in this way.

Examples: maybe this will make you likelier to have a brain seizure when you
are just 60 years old, maybe after prolonged use one region of your brain is
more active making you behave differently (could be positive or negative),
maybe it will make you more susceptible to Parkinson, Alzheimer, etc...

That being said, if everyone was as coward as I am, we would have missed on
lots of inventions.

~~~
pixelmonkey
Applying electrical current DIRECTLY to the brain: what could possibly go
wrong?

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api
I find it frustrating and depressing: this stuff just never seems to get
operationalized in a way that's accessible to folks outside university labs.

Where are the startups? Where are the hobbyist groups?

~~~
Sthorpe
I was just thinking how awesome it would be to have a graph of my brain waves
so I could tune them to alpha waves while coding. :)

~~~
Sthorpe
Holy crap,...just bought this.

<http://www.plxwave.com/>

~~~
timdefrag
I tested a very similar device for the company I used to work at, the UI
looked identical at least. There was very little relationship between my
actual mental state, and the state of the display. The device I used had an
API, so I wrote my own visualizer to make sure they weren't just blurring out
the data -- long story short, I was never impressed with it. Blinking or
moving your head triggered a larger reaction than any thought impulse.

Maybe the tech has gotten better, but I wouldn't hold your breath for anything
that costs $100.

~~~
jonhendry
"Blinking or moving your head triggered a larger reaction than any thought
impulse."

No surprise there, the muscles of the head will have a stronger signal than
the brain, if you're using electrodes outside the skull.

There might be some way of filtering those out, perhaps using additional
electrodes directly on the relevant muscles. Subtract the signal on those
electrodes from the signal on the other electrodes.

~~~
joeyo
Also, based on the geometry of the xwave headset it looks like the
electrode(s) are very rostral, so I would imagine that it picks up a lot of
EOG from the eyes and EMG from the frontalis and corrugator supercilii
(eyebrow muscles).

The ground, again from what I can tell from the photo, is on the earlobe. This
is not a terrible place for a ground (there are no muscles there) but it's not
ideal for removing EMG artifacts.

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udp
And there was me expecting one of those motivational self-help articles.
Christ, things are getting strange.

~~~
gwern
Indeed. Let's hope it's not just strange, or our lives will resemble the
Borges line:

> "He died in exile: as with all men, it was his lot to live in bad times."

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startupfounder
I just read this article in what felt like 5 seconds, then I looked up at the
clock and 5 minutes had gone by. I looked at my girlfriend and said, "How many
of the words did I just read?" and she said, "All of them".

~~~
ndefinite
Love it!

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barefoot
I wonder how much of the documented improvement is placebo effect?

Even if it didn't directly improve focus it seems like it would be a great
placebo. Nine volt batteries are probably commonly perceived as being
powerful. They are used in stun guns, for example. You also experience unusual
side effects after it's applied, further removing any doubt that something
unique is happening to you.

~~~
gwern
> I wonder how much of the documented improvement is placebo effect?

I'm sure they controlled for that, as it is stupendously obvious and common to
control for, and easy to do - just don't turn on the battery, or measure the
effects of the current direction reversed (damages performance according to
the other article).

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Tichy
"He sticks the anode - the positive pole of the battery - to my temple, and
the cathode to my left arm"

Does this even make sense physically? I mean, wouldn't the skull work a bit
like a Faraday cage, not allowing any currents into the brain?

I am highly sceptic of this new hype.

~~~
jonnathanson
I have no idea about the placements on the temple and left arm, but left-
temple / right-temple placements are basically how electroconvulsive
("electroshock") therapy works (in that case, the current is used to generate
seizures).

I'm not a doctor, but as far as I understand, the human body is highly
conductive -- and there are a number of "wires" and conductive fluids running
into and out of the brain. The entire nervous system is, in a very rough
sense, electrochemical circuitry.

~~~
adient
Modern ECT would be performed on only the right side of your brain, with one
electrode on the temple and one slightly offcenter at the top of your head.

------
Coax
Link to full article: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328501.600-zap-
your-...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328501.600-zap-your-brain-
into-the-zone-fast-track-to-pure-focus.html?full=true)

------
bitsoda
Around 6th grade I decided to take up roller hockey, but was pretty bummed out
when I tried to learn how to move around in rollerskates. I couldn't make much
progress for the life of me, until one day, I stumbled across the solid advice
of learning to skate _with_ a hockey stick while chasing a tennis ball. I was
skating as fluid as a twelve year old could within one week. I had always
attributed the accelerated learning to that tennis ball and the subsequent
"desire" to chase after it out of necessity, but now I see that focusing on
the tennis ball was helpful because it muted my prefrontal cortex activity.
Neato.

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itmag
Someone, please make some kits for this and sell online. :)

~~~
tpatke
Before I strap electrodes to my skull, I am going to need more convincing than
"An article online said...". I am surprised at how many smart people are
willing to try this despite the lack of evidence / research.

If I wanted to increase my productivity, I would start by not surfing
hackernews. Eventually, I might move on to "home made electric chair I bought
off ebay", but I think I will exhaust other possibilities first.

But, hey, that's me. :-)

~~~
kstenerud
There's a fair bit of research on this subject. For example
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811910...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811910014667)

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bdg
I read a neat book that partially covered this topic, called "Click" :
[http://books.google.ca/books?id=RK3OHBGj2SkC&printsec=fr...](http://books.google.ca/books?id=RK3OHBGj2SkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=0385529058&hl=en&sa=X&ei=d-MvT5SbHIin0AHAk6nwCg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)

The book talks about how interactions between people/things/events work. The
author talks about how we can feel more connected based on vulnerability,
proximity, flow, similarity, and environment.

The part on flow discussed how a champion racecar driver gets "in the zone" or
"flow". As someone who's done programming competitions in the past (in a room
where others are writing code against you) I could absolutely relate, time
outside just washes out of sight, the curly braces become an extension of you,
it's a down-right magical feeling.

There's another concept I feel is related to this, and I don't want to jump
the shark here but, if you think about how we reach mastery of things we know
(or, in other words, you can read sheet music, but can't play the guitar like
a pro because every few notes you make a small pause and think about the next
few notes), we're focusing on our impulses, or rather, eliminating them. This
TED video does a much more fun/elegant explanation of impulses:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passio...](http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html)

I find it interesting that when I'm personally in a state of "flow", I'm
working without any "impulses". To me it appears like the two are related: you
need to be able to work without impulses in any given skill before you can
enter flow (otherwise, you break out of flow). Now, this isn't enough, and I
feel this is where we get back into the "connections" or "relationships"
discussed in Click. To me it appears we as programmers have a better
predisposition simply because the computer can create for us a synthetic
reality free of normal distractions, we can tweak our proximity to a machine
should we need to (mod your PC case and feel proud, love your mac book, set up
your desktop just the way you like it), we know how vulnerable it can be to
different things (viruses, long running programs, leaky memory), we experience
it enough that it's very familiar and similar to things we've experienced
before (try switching editors or color themes for a day, you'll understand how
your similarity impacts your ability to get into flow), we can control almost
all of the environment. In this synthetic universe we are better predisposed
to making all the mental connections we need to feel like we're using an
extension of ourselves rather than a machine.

This goes back to what we've long known: programmers need to know their stuff
in and out, and need to work in an environment they have control over.

~~~
georgieporgie
The excellent motorcycle magazine MCN (American one, not the low-quality
British one) had a series of articles by a psychologist on flow and how to
attain it. According to the series, attaining flow boils down to:

1) Familiarity. You must be doing something at which you are competent.

2) Stress. You must have a moderate challenge. Imagine Notch building his _n_
th dungeon game, and this time he's trying to do it in ten minutes less than
his previous best time.

3) No distress. Distress comes from too great a challenge, such that it pulls
you out of your flow state (what you call impulses, I believe). Imagine making
Notch do his development in C# on .Net, since he's a Java guru (he may well be
a .Net guru, too, but let's assume he's a noob for the sake of this example).

Another example of something which causes distress and an inability to reach a
flow state would be tackling an integration using a new API which has a non-
intuitive interface and lousy documentation.

To build on your example of changing editors or color schemes, I think this
explains why we developers are so sensitive about working on other people's
code base. It's not simply that it's ugly, or not architected correctly, but
that every tiny, unfamiliar element compounds the inability to attain flow. We
chastise one another for being self-centered and dismissing others' work as
incompetent without objective reason, but within our own brains there's a very
real reason. I suppose it _is_ self-centered by definition, though. :-)

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gtani
[http://www.sott.net/articles/show/216086-Mental-muscle-
six-w...](http://www.sott.net/articles/show/216086-Mental-muscle-six-ways-to-
boost-your-brain)

the above talks about TDCS, but also meditation, bright lights, playing music.
Good read

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itmag
I wonder if the part about removing critical thoughts and going into flow
would be good for people with poor social skills? Perhaps it would be a way to
"get into state", as it's known in the PUA world.

------
LarryMade
Reading around one paper's abstract on testing the after effects of prolonged
tDCS, suggest there might be a migraine risk, I dunno, I never have much
headaches, so it could be a risk I would not want to take.

------
JoshTriplett
Did anyone else think of Larry Niven's "wireheads" when reading this and other
recent articles about it?

~~~
narrator
Actually, it makes me think of Bruce Sterling's wireheads.

~~~
bni
It made me think of Focus, as depicted in "A deepness in the Sky" by Vernor
Vinge.

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TheSOB88
Shouldn't it be that getting into the zone and becoming an expert are two
different things? I've definitely been able to get into the zone as a
programmer, have been for a long time, but I'm far cry from anywhere near
expert level. So why do they couple those in the article?

>Yet you don't have to be a pro to experience it - some people report the same
ability to focus at a far earlier stage in their training, suggesting they are
more naturally predisposed to the flow state than others.

Or maybe flow is what happens when your brain is concentrating, regardless of
your knowledge/experience level.

~~~
TheCapn
I agree with you. I can achieve flow while programming sometimes that when I
look back wonder how I managed to accomplish certain things in the time I had.
Often the code has to be reworked to hash out bugs or inconsistancies but that
doesn't mean the state of mind didn't exist.

A more accurate way to display it is -- bare with me -- watching replays in
Starcraft 2. I've played the original for years and the sequal since its beta
release and I am fairly aware of my limitations, but just once in a while I am
able to lock in and accomplish much more intense output than what I'm
typically capable of (replays back this up too). I'm not a pro, I still have
much to learn but it doesn't mean I can't "lock in".

------
aorshan
We're getting closer and closer to The Matrix. Before you know it, you're
going to be able to upload knowledge straight to your brain.

