

Trans-Cranial Direct Current Stimulation - rollthehard6
http://www.radiolab.org/story/9-volt-nirvana/

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diafygi
I'm frustrated that they spent very little time investigating the
scientific/medical voracity of the claims, and instead focused almost entirely
on anecdotes.

Radiolab used to be great in that almost all the content was about uncovering
the awesome science behind a topic. But now they just do mostly "story" or
"experience" shows. I used to highly recommend it to my non-science friends as
a way to learn about the science behind a topic, but haven't in a while.

~~~
gtani
Here's some first person accounts from HN'ers, including a couple alarming
ones:

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3525744](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3525744)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5880599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5880599)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7872130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7872130)

~~~
Multics
The first two are _speculation_ , not first person accounts!

If you take the third at face value, then the poster is edging toward being a
genius, but at the cost of being a little more neurotic. Hardly "alarming".

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anigbrowl
Is anyone familiar with transcranial alternating current stimulation? As a
synthesizer geek with a lot of, ah, neuro-introspective experience, modulation
seems like a very natural avenue of exploration to me. I get intense pleasure
sensations from simply listening to certain kinds of sounds (not necessarily
in a musical context) and find it therapeutic to play and adjust droning
noises at low frequencies, and have experimented with generating interfence
patterns at brainwave frequencies as well as resonant frequencies of the body
or harmonics thereof (eg the sort of sub-basses you can feel in your chest). I
had actually been thinking about picking up a NeuroSky measuring headset
because their SDK includes a tool for MIDI translation, but I'm also curious
about tA/DCS.

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plg
neuroscientist here. just so you all know the science behind TCDS (i.e. why
and how it works) is ... almost entirely unknown. We have no idea why and how
it does what it does. (and no idea what else it might be doing also). Zap at
your own risk.

~~~
leot
Indeed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

On the other hand, if it is "broke", the long-term effects of tDCS are about
as well-studied as the long-term effects of many of the psychoactive
substances (legal and otherwise) that we regularly take. No one knows, e.g.,
what happens to brains 50 years after 5 years of chronically administering
SSRIs. Nor do we really know how to characterize "the long-term effects" of
nicotine intake (and it's not at all clear that the "long-term effects" of
anything that changes one's brain -- apart from in obvious ways e.g. by
shrinking it -- is even something that it would make sense to _try_ to
characterize).

In general, when it comes to psychoactive _anything_ (and you might even
include words, music, prolonged withdrawal from society, and sexy walking in
this list) we don't have much more than a few interesting results here and
there. When it comes to brains/minds/persons, we really don't know.

What we _can_ surmise is that those things that mammalian brains have _not_
been exposed to (LSD, tDCS, fluoxetine) are likely to have less predictable
effects than things in the environment that are phylogenetically familiar
(sleep, exercise, prolonged concentration, temporally extended effort, etc.).

In other words, if things are going poorly for you, try the boring approaches
first. If those approaches don't work, though, there aren't really any
compelling reasons to avoid techniques that are less familiar to your biology.

~~~
Multics
"Indeed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I would take tDCS over smoking or drinking, any day of the week.

Or even extreme sports.

It's socially acceptable to do _some_ activities which are known to be deadly,
but god forbid trying the unknown! That's a total _faux pas_. What BS. Where's
the cost/benefit analysis. Yes: drinking, smoking, and sports can yield
utility (fun), but people increasing their IQ or any other vector of
intelligence could have a profound impact on society.

I'm in agreement with the rest of your post.

Edit: changed italics from HTML to Markdown

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caycep
There's been a couple of interesting tDCS papers but as far as I understand,
they're hotly debated. It's hard to replicate; the little I've done w/ the
devices (and rTMS, the magnetic pulse version), these things are extremely
operator dependent, if you turn a few degrees the wrong way or move a cpl mm,
you screw up the effect. Ideally, they should do it on a frame mounted around
the head, but the psychology people felt that would totally confound their
experiments...

~~~
dmicah
Who are these "psychology people"? Automated coil placement exists, for
example: [http://www.rogue-resolutions.com/system/axilum-tms-
robotics/](http://www.rogue-resolutions.com/system/axilum-tms-robotics/) .

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dave_sullivan
Could anyone recommend a good recent-ish survey paper of the applicable
research in this field? Seems like there's quite a bit going on, but mostly I
see news with no real content or papers behind a paywall.

I assume there's a few factors driving growth in this area, what are they?
Maybe it's just literally cheaper access to powerful imaging devices?

~~~
caycep
I have to look myself, it's not really what I spend most of my time in, but I
heard a talk by Gottfried Schlaug from BIDMC in Boston and he made a few
comments, may be useful to pubmed him and see if he's written any reviews or
editorials.

tDCS is still an emerging tech, and I think not a lot of people have figured
out how to do it. Transcranial magnetic stim has been around a lot longer. I
don't think people really know the best way to do that either, but there's
more experimental data showing that if you do it via certain
methods/paradigms, you get a measurable experimental effect of some sort
(usually a muscle jerk measured in the arm, or maybe performance on some
standardized cognitive/motor skills test, etc).

The problem is that no one is exactly sure what it does. Most groups do not
have an IRB to study this in tissue - getting animal IACUC approval is hard,
and in humans, without a good medical reason to go through the cranium, forget
about it... (i.e. most of the neurophysiology data we know today, aside from
in animals, is from opportunities to record data in surgeries for epilepsy or
DBS surgery of Parkinson's disease).

So for lack of a better term, the holy mantra of "neuroplasticity" is involved
for a hand-wavy explanation of effect...

------
revelation
_just 2 milliamps (think 9-volt battery)_

Oh come on.

~~~
inetsee
Several of the DIY tDCS plans specify using a 9 volt battery because of its
built in current limiting. A 9 volt battery applied to the typical resistance
can't provide more than a few milliamperes of current. You don't have to worry
about getting a dangerous amount of electrical current applied to your brain.
A battery-powered tDCS rig is inherently safer than one plugged into the wall.

~~~
windsurfer
It might not be "dangerous" but depending on where the current is applied and
for how long, people have passed out and had seizures.

~~~
ridgeguy
Citation for this, please? I've read there have been no instances of seizure
or loss of consciousness from TCDCS when practiced in line with the field's
standards for current density, equipment safety, etc.

For example, here's a clip of a safety study from The Journal of Pain:

(314) Safety of the transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS): evaluation
of 815 tDCS sessions in 100 chronic- pain patients H Knotkova, A Nafissi, Z
Leuschner, D Das, I Dhokal, and R Cruciani; Beth Israel Medical Center, New
York, NY

There is a growing body of evidence that tDCS can alleviate pain in patients
with various pain syndromes, suggesting clinical potential of tDCS in pain
man- agement. The purpose of this retrospective study was to evaluate safety
and tolerability of tDCS in patients who underwent tDCS treatment at the
Institute for Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation, Department of Pain Medicine and
Palliative Care, Beth Israel Medical Center, New York, between November 2008
and Sep- tember 2010. TDCS was delivered with Phoressor II 850 PM in five
20-min ses- sions on 5 consecutive days, at 2 mA, applying either anodal
(excitatory) tDCS over the motor cortex or cathodal (inhibitory) tDCS over the
somatosen- sory cortex, using 2 saline-soaked electrodes of 36cm2. One hundred
patients with various chronic pain syndromes received 815 tDCS sessions (639
anodal and 176 cathodal) delivered as 172 five-day treatment blocks (131
anodal, 35 cathodal; 80 patients received only anodal treatment blocks, 14
patients only cathodal blocks, 6 received both). Neither anodal nor cathodal
tDCS resulted in any serious adverse events (AEs). The most frequently
reported non-serious AEs were: transient Tingling/Burning/Itching under the
electrode during the stimulation in 27 (4.2%) of anodal and 14 (7.9%) of
cathodal sessions; transient Headache after the stimulation: 16 (2.5%) anodal,
2 (1.1%) cathodal); Fatigue: 7 (1.1%) anodal, 0 cathodal; Nausea: 4 (0.6%)
anodal, 1 (0.6%) cathodal; Dis- comfort: 3 (0.5%) anodal, 1 (0.6%) cathodal;
Dizziness: 1 (0.2%) anodal, 4 (2.3%) cathodal; Insomnia: in 3 (0.5%) of anodal
and 1 (0.6%) of cathodal ses- sions. The adherence to the tDCS treatment was
very good: patients completed 92% (111 of 121) of anodal five-day treatment
blocks and 100% (35 of 35) of cathodal blocks, indicating high acceptability
of tDCS procedure. In conclusion, the findings contribute to the evidence on
tDCS safety, supporting clinical potential of tDCS in chronic pain management.

~~~
Multics
Correct. He's scaremongering.

