15 ms·

Neuroscientists' Open Letter To DIY Brain Hackers

209 points by sanj 10y ago

lawless123 10y ago
""Some people were administering it to their kids," he says. " WTF , fair enough if you want to risk it on yourself but not your children with still developing brains.
- gwbas1c 10y ago
  The whole thing just reminds me about the radium water craze years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor https://67.media.tumblr.com/1899ba50f59df9c88dace35c13c2c1a7/tumblr_nvvm8tVOyn1rwjpnyo1_500.jpg https://67.media.tumblr.com/1899ba50f59df9c88dace35c13c2c1a7...
  - DigitalJack 10y ago
    I watched a documentary on Netflix a while back that talked about the Radium health craze and carelessness. I think it was about the rise of investigative chemistry with regard to poisonings, etc. The radium portion was horrifying to think about.
    - komali2 10y ago
      As long as the mindset of "we're done hearing from experts!" is allowed to resurface again and again, we'll have this problem. See: Anti-vaccers, the insanity with radium, maybe even Bob Marley's toe cancer.
    - mhurron 10y ago
      http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poisoners/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poisoners/ The Poisoner's Handbook The radium portion was especially sad, but fit in quite well with the lead section in american societies willingness to poison people to improve profit.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    I once lived in a area that had naturally elevated levels of radium in the city water supply. Nice that each water bill had a warning about possible bone cancer risk in drinking the water. Needless to say we had a delivery service for our drinking water.
- nabla9 10y ago
  Insanity of proponents of pseudoscience has no boundaries.
  - reachtarunhere 10y ago
    Too early to say if it pseudoscience. They don't know the effects yet. It is just risky tinkering.
    - BlanketLogic 10y ago
      > They don't know the effects yet. That's what makes it 'pseudo'.
      - Karunamon 10y ago
        So by that definition, any new and untested-en-masse "thing" is "pseudoscience", with all the implied quackery baggage that term applies. That is not a useful definition.
        ricksplat 10y ago
        It's pseudoscience if it's presented as "scientific fact"; science is the process by which such facts are established. Otherwise you're talking about a hypothesis.
        Karunamon 10y ago
        http://jjodx.weebly.com/home/seven-papers-about-tdcs http://jjodx.weebly.com/home/seven-papers-about-tdcs Sounds like scientific fact to me. We know it works, it's just a matter of establishing effects on specific tasks.
        ricksplat 10y ago
        Sigh did you read TFA? It's not "just" a matter of establishing effects - article goes into why it's not that straightforward ... as another commenter said TDCS is like using a sledge-hammer to tune a piano. We know that TDCS does "something" but all the hypotheses are "two tailed" which basically means all you can say is there is an effect - not whether it's a good one or bad one. The pseudoscience is claiming these hypotheses are certain.
- verbify 10y ago
  Yup, same with anti-vaxxers. But they (like anti-vaxxers, or even vaxxers) think they're doing the kids a favour.
gwbas1c 10y ago
I think the thing that a lot of hackers don't understand is unintended consequences. It's fine when you're hacking a computer game, and the worst case scenario is that the game malfunctions. Things like overclocking a PC, or re-tuning a car, have more tangible consequences, but those consequences ultimately mean that the hacker will damage an easily replaceable commodity. A person's brain is not replaceable.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  That's one of the reasons I've stayed away from 'beta blocker' medications even though they're designed to tone down stage fright to a bare minimum. There are, from what I've read, potential side effects that can be rather severe. As in, some real unwelcome motor/cognition changes. That's enough cautionary literature to keep me away. Strangely enough though, I'm not anti-supplement (vitamins, PH stacks, etc) in the least.
  - graeme 10y ago
    Can you point to any papers? I'm curious. A friend (actually not me) was just asking about them. He gets anxiety, and wanted to have them on hand in case of a severe attack. But he's wary of medications generally and is on the fence about taking them.
    - DigitalJack 10y ago
      Your friend should consult someone who spends a lot of time studying these sorts of things. I take a beta blocker, by prescription, for anxiety, and it does work for me. But I'd never recommend anyone else try it. I'd recommend they ask their doctor about it specifically.
    - Aelinsaar 10y ago
      Ask him how he feels about diabetes.
    - AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
      Beta blockers aren't great for sudden panic attacks. I took them for years, and while they're great for toning down the anxiety baseline, they don't even remotely approach benzos when it comes to mitigating severe panic. Sadly the only medications you can reasonably get out there that will address an incipient or in progress panic attack are benzos. There are other supplements/medications that are helpful (phenibut is my goto since I no longer wanted to take benzos), but none of them are fast acting or powerful enough to stop something that's already happening.
api 10y ago
TDCS seems like using a sledgehammer to tune a piano.
- bonesmoses 10y ago
  Wait, you're telling me that a highly sensitive organ that maintains a complicated electromagnetic and chemical signaling system within a medium of fragile and compressed axions is difficult to tweak with grossly tuned omnidirectional fields?! Surely, you jest.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  Nicely put. I'd venture that a lot of the "plug in and go" crowd might be better served with some vigorous exercise rather than electrical stimulation. At least one of the two has viable, peer reviewed studies and results to consider. But hey, Darwin Awards ain't going to write themselves.
  - freshhawk 10y ago
    In addition to vigorous exercise, add in all the promising results from studies on mindfulness meditation as well. But clearly the cyberpunk aesthetic, and techno-solutionism is what is motivating here, it's not the evidence.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      I'd never have thought there would be anyone who'd want to live in a Peter Watts novel, but here we are.
      - api 10y ago
        Governments seem to think 1984 is an instruction manual so this is not uncommon.
VLM 10y ago
So the TLDR is its basically like exercise where you can quite easily hurt yourself if you have no idea what you're doing, and you probably do not especially if you're a broscience devotee, and most people make pretty dumb decisions about appropriate levels of repetition, effort, and pain. Another way of putting it is people with poor judgment can now at some effort and money, destroy their brains, not just their knees and shoulders. Eh. Another good analogy is alcohol consumption, although unlike alcohol it appears both brain stimulation and exercise can have a net positive effect.
- DasIch 10y ago
  With exercise there are at least people who do know what they're doing you can ask. In this case there isn't anybody who really knows what they're doing, at least not to the point that they can get any benefits out of it.
  - ihaveahadron 10y ago
    I think the real "only" way to improve your brain is to improve the sophistication of the "software" that makes up the wiring of your brain. I'm pretty sure from a logical standpoint that electricity alone doesn't do this.
shas3 10y ago
Hope someone writes a similar letter about nootropics. There's little evidence about their long term effects.
- ninjakeyboard 10y ago
  I think centrophenoxine and racetams are fairly well tolerated. I've cycled them on and off for a few years with only positive outcomes. They've been studied for decades. It's probably worse to take something like tylenol pm every night, which is FDA approved, OTC etc. http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/common-anticholinergic-drugs-like-benadryl-linked-increased-dementia-risk-201501287667 http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/common-anticholinergic-dr...
  - shas3 10y ago
    But where's the link to centrophenoxine and racetams? Your link only talks about anticholinergic drugs. I have seen such results about benzodiazepine http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/benzodiazepine-use-may-raise-risk-alzheimers-disease-201409107397 http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/benzodiazepine-use-may-ra... When you are chemically toying with your brain, it is good to know if there are any adverse long terms effects. Risk vs. reward. Surely some non chemical ways of modifying the your brain can also have adverse effects: like eroding concentration due to constant multitasking.
    - ninjakeyboard 10y ago
      Here is an account of long term centrophenoxine use. Not sure there is lots of study demonstrating 35 years of use is safe in large qty of the population so this should be treated as an anecdotal report only. It does cite other study he has done. http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/64596-my-personal-35-year-report-on-the-value-of-centrophenoxine-in-antiaging-by-professor-imre-zs-nagy/ http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/64596-my-personal-35-ye... There are links to outcomes of studies on oxiracetam here which is my go to racetam: https://examine.com/supplements/oxiracetam/ https://examine.com/supplements/oxiracetam/
- ldehaan 10y ago
drdaeman 10y ago
Huh. I thought it's something about DIY EEG devices or something like that and is quite surprised with what some people do with their heads...
louprado 10y ago
RadioLab's 9-Volt Nirvana episode discussed how DARPA uses tCDS to enhance sharp-shooting ability. At the end of the episode, the reporter conveyed a sense of loss when the tCDS system was no longer available to her. She sounded like a drug addict that pines for that feeling of their first high and then risks spending their life in vain trying to recover that feeling. If your life literally depends on a skill and supervised tCDS can improve it, then the reward may outweigh the unknown risks. But for other tasks/skills, it is difficult to justify. Edit: typos, clarity http://www.radiolab.org/story/9-volt-nirvana http://www.radiolab.org/story/9-volt-nirvana
- spdustin 10y ago
  A quote from the reporter's blog [0]: "When the nice neuroscientists put the electrodes on me, the thing that made the earth drop out from under my feet was that for the first time in my life, everything in my head finally shut the fuck up." I'll be honest, that is a pretty compelling testimonial for many folks. [0]: http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2012/02/09/better-living-through-electrochemistry/ http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2012/02/09/better-living-th...
  - djtriptych 10y ago
    Similar feeling to transcendental meditation. You can change your brain..
  - kbenson 10y ago
    From that blog post: And then, finally, the main question: what role does doubt and fear play in our lives if its eradication actually causes so many improvements? Do we make more ethical decisions when we listen to our inner voices of self-doubt or when we’re freed from them? If we all wore these caps, would the world be a better place? That's a really interesting thought. Not so much "would the world be better", as there is a presumption present in that question that more rational decision making is necessarily better, but if tDCS works similar to how it did with her with other people, we might have a way to study rational decision making in groups in interesting ways.
simbalion 10y ago
Real brain hacking is about subliminal conditioning. Leave it to WIRED and similar publications to muddy the water and dumb down the populace.
- ihaveahadron 10y ago
  I think you are the one that is right about this "brainhacking" stuff.
stared 10y ago
Forgive my votum separatum, but: > The biggest risk is that we just don't know what all the risks are. I think that's the biggest risk. I would call it "an opportunity". And as far as it is being done voluntarily, and there is a non-zero entry barrier, I am indebted to all those who (maybe) risk their health and lives for possible progress of science, medicine and technology. Compare it to extreme sports, where there is risk, but often with little or no long-term benefit for the rest of society. If we restrict ourselves only to "safe", "regulated" and "within the sacred walls of academia" experiments, we will miss (or seriously delay) a lot of things. Especially: > I don't know that any hospital review board would actually let us do that experiment, so we might never know what that does to brain activity.
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  An opportunity which comes blind, and with your brain as the stakes strikes me as something more akin to "A Gamble". It might actually be an incredibly poor gamble too.
  - wnoise 10y ago
    It's a gamble for those doing it. If you're willing to let them (and I don't see sufficient grounds on which to stop them) then it's pure upside for everyone else, as we learn the results. Very callously speaking, of course. And the upsides are much less when they're not thoroughly and scientifically recording their results, which they're probably not.
    - Aelinsaar 10y ago
      The thing is, you're assuming that the methodology employed by people acting as their own guinea pigs will yield useful data. I think this will be a case of GIGO, and the answers we need will eventually come from study, not personal sacrifice.
- ccrush 10y ago
  Yes, but unless these experiments are done by pairs or groups, you are getting what is passed off as scientific results from someone who is experimenting on their own brain with a sample size of one and no control group. How do you trust the results from an experiment conducted on the experimenter's brain? What if the experimenter loses the capacity to properly conduct the experiment in the process? How would you know the difference between that and he or she being incompetent in the first place, aside from the fact that they're attempting this in the first place?
teslaberry 10y ago
transcranial anything is nonsense for anything but identifying blot clots and macro structures in the brain. entire generations of brain research based on mri activation patterns are complete pseudoscientific bullshit, alleging scientific hypothesis about neural activation can be confirmed or falsified based on macro motions of blood in the brain. this is garbage. similarly , tdcs and other nonsense going through your 'skull' does not target what we know to be the factual cause of brain function, cellular micro structures of brain , in particular ; NEURONS. targeting macro anything in the brain may achieve an influence the same as firing a bullet into the brain may achieve an influence on the macro structures of the brain. this is garbage. tdcs is more garbage, but then , so is a some amount of what many scientific 'experts' call cognitive science. that said, this garbage is not terribly dangerous compared with the overprescription of antidepressants and painkillers i don't see why some neuroscientist is so concerned with the tdcs crowd other than the fact that he feels his legitimacy as an 'expert' is being insulted by the fake garage room engineering of transcranial garbage stingers. and to be sure, as far as drugs go, you're still better off taking a legitimate stimulant for performance enhancement. common sense dictates that TANSTAAFL with respect to performance enhancement. if TDCS is claiming they are providing your brain a freelunch stimulus without any come down or drawback. THEY ARE LYING. the common intution of brain enhancement is that the only way to 'enhance' your cognitive function without a comedown is to keep healthy , exercise , eat well, sleep well , and USE YOUR BRAIN like you use your muscles. THERE AINT NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH. any garage tinkerer or ivory tower idiot that says otherwise is lying or a fundamentalist ideological believer in XYZ...
deleted 10y ago
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desireco42 10y ago
Frustration comes from how slow and opaque research in this area is. I think their warning is very appropriate and timely. Having said that, I think a lot of benefit can be had from transparent research.
etrautmann 10y ago
Neuroscientist here: Just listened to a talk from a reseacher who studied tDCS and tACS in human subjects, and found that IQ scores were actually going down relative to control groups. It's absolutely not clear what the appropriate protocols are, and behavioral outcomes could be incredibly sensitive to factors such as 1) electrode placement, 2) stimulation frequency, 3) amplitude, 4) direct or alternating current, etc. On top of that, benefits may come at the cost of other unobserved effects (i.e. faster learning and plasticity, accompanied by faster forgetting, to oversimplify).
- amelius 10y ago
  > IQ scores were actually going down By how much? If someone can trade severe anxiety for perhaps 5-10 IQ points, then in most cases they will probably sign up.
  - nibs 10y ago
    Anxiety and high IQ are linked: http://www.livescience.com/36259-anxiety-linked-high-iq.html http://www.livescience.com/36259-anxiety-linked-high-iq.html so it is possible (I am speculating) that by reducing anxiety, you are reducing IQ. Not everyone wants to be smart, but it is not a decision I would take lightly. I wonder if you could perform the opposite operation, jacking up anxiety and IQ...
    - sbov 10y ago
      Even ignoring the whole "IQ = smart" thing, you can have a lower IQ and still have a high IQ.
      - unimpressive 10y ago
        This was not a well formulated sentence. I'll go ahead and clarify it some for other people reading and scratching their heads: >you can have a lower IQ and still have a high IQ You can lower your IQ and still have a high IQ. I.E going from 130 to 120 is different from going from 100 to 90.
kjell 10y ago
The first 40 minutes of this week's "Invisibilia" touches on the effects transcranial magnetic stimulation had on a woman who lived with undiagnosed aspergers for most of her life. > ALIX SPIEGEL, BYLINE: Until she was 54 years old, Kim (ph) was totally unaware that there were things in the world that she could not see. > KIM: Everything that was intended in this went completely over my head, and now I saw it - completely missed the meaning of the whole thing until after the TMS. And then I saw the whole thing clearly. http://www.npr.org/2016/07/07/485138695/invisibilia-an-experiment-helps-one-woman-see-the-world-in-a-new-way http://www.npr.org/2016/07/07/485138695/invisibilia-an-exper... (The TMS study "Kim" participated in took place at the same hospital that the co-author of this letter works, Beth Israel Deaconess.)
- gr3yh47 10y ago
  The linked transcript is fairly short and DEFINITELY worth a read. Very interesting stuff.
  - holografix 10y ago
    There is a much longer and even more fascinating article here on HN about a similar case. You should search for it, if I was in front of a computer I'd find it for you. In it the man seems to have a lasting effect and is "cured" from Aspergers ends up splitting with his wife of I remember correctly.
    - rjeli 10y ago
      http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/an-experimental-autism-treatment-cost-me-my-marriage http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/an-experimental-aut...
- dewarrn1 10y ago
  Thank you for mentioning this — my podcast app didn't notify me that Season 2 was underway.
justsaysmthng 10y ago
A good idea would be to create a website were self experimenters can log their results, describe their setups, take tests and answer questionnaires. Similar to what erowid did for drugs back in the days - the self reported "trip reports". Of course - warn people that it's dangerous, etc etc, but people are still going to do it so why not use that as 'volunteer' experimental data.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  That's a start. But given that the report is subjective, and its a report on brain-altering drugs, as a data set its of questionable usefulness. E.g. all those that were changed to be hyper-focused will not be able to change their attention to reporting - so many will be missing from the reports. Others may become depressive and incapable of reporting as well. Its like "everybody who didn't survive the experiment, raise your hands!"
SShrike 10y ago
I had no idea people actually tried stuff like this.
rudedogg 10y ago
Apparently there's already commercial device for this. I came across a paper about it. “Unfocus” on foc.us: commercial tDCS headset impairs working memory - http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-015-4391-9 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-015-4391-9
gnoway 10y ago
The actual open letter: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.24689/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.24689/full
artifaxx 10y ago
Given that the human brain is full of electrical impulses it makes sense that external impulses can change our brains. The article mentions some people seeing the opposite results from the same protocol. It seems likely we will need more precise methods of stimulation to see better results given how complex our brains are.
lincolnpark 10y ago
I'm the one they featured in this article.. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7592_supp/full/531S6a.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7592_supp/full/53...
- 323454 10y ago
  Has it worked for you before?
bcheung 10y ago
Peter: Egon, this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole in your head, remember that? Egon: That would have worked if you didn’t stop me.
smegel 10y ago
> a zapping session may produce an effect exactly the opposite of what's intended Sounds a lot like anti-depressant medication.
orionblastar 10y ago
My brothers and I saw a child psychiatrist in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She had stuck needles in our head and tried to treat us via electric shock for depression. We were all high functioning with above average intelligence. Ever since I had problems remebering names and faces of most people I met and other memory problems. She said we were too smart to have autism but high functioning autism wasn't discovered until later in the 1990s so we might have been misdiagnosed. It makes it hard for me to find work and be accepted.
ommunist 10y ago
Does wearing monitor headphones possess not obvious risks to your brain functions?
- throwanem 10y ago
  That depends on how badly miswired they are, I suppose.

209 points by sanj 10y ago

""Some people were administering it to their kids," he says. " WTF , fair enough if you want to risk it on yourself but not your children with still developing brains.

gwbas1c 10y ago
The whole thing just reminds me about the radium water craze years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor https://67.media.tumblr.com/1899ba50f59df9c88dace35c13c2c1a7/tumblr_nvvm8tVOyn1rwjpnyo1_500.jpg https://67.media.tumblr.com/1899ba50f59df9c88dace35c13c2c1a7...
- DigitalJack 10y ago
  I watched a documentary on Netflix a while back that talked about the Radium health craze and carelessness. I think it was about the rise of investigative chemistry with regard to poisonings, etc. The radium portion was horrifying to think about.
  - komali2 10y ago
    As long as the mindset of "we're done hearing from experts!" is allowed to resurface again and again, we'll have this problem. See: Anti-vaccers, the insanity with radium, maybe even Bob Marley's toe cancer.
  - mhurron 10y ago
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poisoners/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poisoners/ The Poisoner's Handbook The radium portion was especially sad, but fit in quite well with the lead section in american societies willingness to poison people to improve profit.
- ams6110 10y ago
  I once lived in a area that had naturally elevated levels of radium in the city water supply. Nice that each water bill had a warning about possible bone cancer risk in drinking the water. Needless to say we had a delivery service for our drinking water.
nabla9 10y ago
Insanity of proponents of pseudoscience has no boundaries.
- reachtarunhere 10y ago
  Too early to say if it pseudoscience. They don't know the effects yet. It is just risky tinkering.
  - BlanketLogic 10y ago
    > They don't know the effects yet. That's what makes it 'pseudo'.
    - Karunamon 10y ago
      So by that definition, any new and untested-en-masse "thing" is "pseudoscience", with all the implied quackery baggage that term applies. That is not a useful definition.
      - ricksplat 10y ago
        It's pseudoscience if it's presented as "scientific fact"; science is the process by which such facts are established. Otherwise you're talking about a hypothesis.
        Karunamon 10y ago
        http://jjodx.weebly.com/home/seven-papers-about-tdcs http://jjodx.weebly.com/home/seven-papers-about-tdcs Sounds like scientific fact to me. We know it works, it's just a matter of establishing effects on specific tasks.
        ricksplat 10y ago
        Sigh did you read TFA? It's not "just" a matter of establishing effects - article goes into why it's not that straightforward ... as another commenter said TDCS is like using a sledge-hammer to tune a piano. We know that TDCS does "something" but all the hypotheses are "two tailed" which basically means all you can say is there is an effect - not whether it's a good one or bad one. The pseudoscience is claiming these hypotheses are certain.
verbify 10y ago
Yup, same with anti-vaxxers. But they (like anti-vaxxers, or even vaxxers) think they're doing the kids a favour.

gwbas1c 10y ago

I think the thing that a lot of hackers don't understand is unintended consequences. It's fine when you're hacking a computer game, and the worst case scenario is that the game malfunctions. Things like overclocking a PC, or re-tuning a car, have more tangible consequences, but those consequences ultimately mean that the hacker will damage an easily replaceable commodity. A person's brain is not replaceable.

6stringmerc 10y ago
That's one of the reasons I've stayed away from 'beta blocker' medications even though they're designed to tone down stage fright to a bare minimum. There are, from what I've read, potential side effects that can be rather severe. As in, some real unwelcome motor/cognition changes. That's enough cautionary literature to keep me away. Strangely enough though, I'm not anti-supplement (vitamins, PH stacks, etc) in the least.
- graeme 10y ago
  Can you point to any papers? I'm curious. A friend (actually not me) was just asking about them. He gets anxiety, and wanted to have them on hand in case of a severe attack. But he's wary of medications generally and is on the fence about taking them.
  - DigitalJack 10y ago
    Your friend should consult someone who spends a lot of time studying these sorts of things. I take a beta blocker, by prescription, for anxiety, and it does work for me. But I'd never recommend anyone else try it. I'd recommend they ask their doctor about it specifically.
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    Ask him how he feels about diabetes.
  - AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
    Beta blockers aren't great for sudden panic attacks. I took them for years, and while they're great for toning down the anxiety baseline, they don't even remotely approach benzos when it comes to mitigating severe panic. Sadly the only medications you can reasonably get out there that will address an incipient or in progress panic attack are benzos. There are other supplements/medications that are helpful (phenibut is my goto since I no longer wanted to take benzos), but none of them are fast acting or powerful enough to stop something that's already happening.

api 10y ago

TDCS seems like using a sledgehammer to tune a piano.

bonesmoses 10y ago
Wait, you're telling me that a highly sensitive organ that maintains a complicated electromagnetic and chemical signaling system within a medium of fragile and compressed axions is difficult to tweak with grossly tuned omnidirectional fields?! Surely, you jest.
6stringmerc 10y ago
Nicely put. I'd venture that a lot of the "plug in and go" crowd might be better served with some vigorous exercise rather than electrical stimulation. At least one of the two has viable, peer reviewed studies and results to consider. But hey, Darwin Awards ain't going to write themselves.
- freshhawk 10y ago
  In addition to vigorous exercise, add in all the promising results from studies on mindfulness meditation as well. But clearly the cyberpunk aesthetic, and techno-solutionism is what is motivating here, it's not the evidence.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    I'd never have thought there would be anyone who'd want to live in a Peter Watts novel, but here we are.
    - api 10y ago
      Governments seem to think 1984 is an instruction manual so this is not uncommon.

VLM 10y ago

So the TLDR is its basically like exercise where you can quite easily hurt yourself if you have no idea what you're doing, and you probably do not especially if you're a broscience devotee, and most people make pretty dumb decisions about appropriate levels of repetition, effort, and pain. Another way of putting it is people with poor judgment can now at some effort and money, destroy their brains, not just their knees and shoulders. Eh. Another good analogy is alcohol consumption, although unlike alcohol it appears both brain stimulation and exercise can have a net positive effect.

DasIch 10y ago
With exercise there are at least people who do know what they're doing you can ask. In this case there isn't anybody who really knows what they're doing, at least not to the point that they can get any benefits out of it.
- ihaveahadron 10y ago
  I think the real "only" way to improve your brain is to improve the sophistication of the "software" that makes up the wiring of your brain. I'm pretty sure from a logical standpoint that electricity alone doesn't do this.

shas3 10y ago

Hope someone writes a similar letter about nootropics. There's little evidence about their long term effects.

ninjakeyboard 10y ago
I think centrophenoxine and racetams are fairly well tolerated. I've cycled them on and off for a few years with only positive outcomes. They've been studied for decades. It's probably worse to take something like tylenol pm every night, which is FDA approved, OTC etc. http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/common-anticholinergic-drugs-like-benadryl-linked-increased-dementia-risk-201501287667 http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/common-anticholinergic-dr...
- shas3 10y ago
  But where's the link to centrophenoxine and racetams? Your link only talks about anticholinergic drugs. I have seen such results about benzodiazepine http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/benzodiazepine-use-may-raise-risk-alzheimers-disease-201409107397 http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/benzodiazepine-use-may-ra... When you are chemically toying with your brain, it is good to know if there are any adverse long terms effects. Risk vs. reward. Surely some non chemical ways of modifying the your brain can also have adverse effects: like eroding concentration due to constant multitasking.
  - ninjakeyboard 10y ago
    Here is an account of long term centrophenoxine use. Not sure there is lots of study demonstrating 35 years of use is safe in large qty of the population so this should be treated as an anecdotal report only. It does cite other study he has done. http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/64596-my-personal-35-year-report-on-the-value-of-centrophenoxine-in-antiaging-by-professor-imre-zs-nagy/ http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/64596-my-personal-35-ye... There are links to outcomes of studies on oxiracetam here which is my go to racetam: https://examine.com/supplements/oxiracetam/ https://examine.com/supplements/oxiracetam/
ldehaan 10y ago

drdaeman 10y ago

Huh. I thought it's something about DIY EEG devices or something like that and is quite surprised with what some people do with their heads...

louprado 10y ago

RadioLab's 9-Volt Nirvana episode discussed how DARPA uses tCDS to enhance sharp-shooting ability. At the end of the episode, the reporter conveyed a sense of loss when the tCDS system was no longer available to her. She sounded like a drug addict that pines for that feeling of their first high and then risks spending their life in vain trying to recover that feeling. If your life literally depends on a skill and supervised tCDS can improve it, then the reward may outweigh the unknown risks. But for other tasks/skills, it is difficult to justify. Edit: typos, clarity http://www.radiolab.org/story/9-volt-nirvana http://www.radiolab.org/story/9-volt-nirvana

spdustin 10y ago
A quote from the reporter's blog [0]: "When the nice neuroscientists put the electrodes on me, the thing that made the earth drop out from under my feet was that for the first time in my life, everything in my head finally shut the fuck up." I'll be honest, that is a pretty compelling testimonial for many folks. [0]: http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2012/02/09/better-living-through-electrochemistry/ http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2012/02/09/better-living-th...
- djtriptych 10y ago
  Similar feeling to transcendental meditation. You can change your brain..
- kbenson 10y ago
  From that blog post: And then, finally, the main question: what role does doubt and fear play in our lives if its eradication actually causes so many improvements? Do we make more ethical decisions when we listen to our inner voices of self-doubt or when we’re freed from them? If we all wore these caps, would the world be a better place? That's a really interesting thought. Not so much "would the world be better", as there is a presumption present in that question that more rational decision making is necessarily better, but if tDCS works similar to how it did with her with other people, we might have a way to study rational decision making in groups in interesting ways.

simbalion 10y ago

Real brain hacking is about subliminal conditioning. Leave it to WIRED and similar publications to muddy the water and dumb down the populace.

ihaveahadron 10y ago
I think you are the one that is right about this "brainhacking" stuff.

stared 10y ago

Forgive my votum separatum, but: > The biggest risk is that we just don't know what all the risks are. I think that's the biggest risk. I would call it "an opportunity". And as far as it is being done voluntarily, and there is a non-zero entry barrier, I am indebted to all those who (maybe) risk their health and lives for possible progress of science, medicine and technology. Compare it to extreme sports, where there is risk, but often with little or no long-term benefit for the rest of society. If we restrict ourselves only to "safe", "regulated" and "within the sacred walls of academia" experiments, we will miss (or seriously delay) a lot of things. Especially: > I don't know that any hospital review board would actually let us do that experiment, so we might never know what that does to brain activity.

Aelinsaar 10y ago
An opportunity which comes blind, and with your brain as the stakes strikes me as something more akin to "A Gamble". It might actually be an incredibly poor gamble too.
- wnoise 10y ago
  It's a gamble for those doing it. If you're willing to let them (and I don't see sufficient grounds on which to stop them) then it's pure upside for everyone else, as we learn the results. Very callously speaking, of course. And the upsides are much less when they're not thoroughly and scientifically recording their results, which they're probably not.
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    The thing is, you're assuming that the methodology employed by people acting as their own guinea pigs will yield useful data. I think this will be a case of GIGO, and the answers we need will eventually come from study, not personal sacrifice.
ccrush 10y ago
Yes, but unless these experiments are done by pairs or groups, you are getting what is passed off as scientific results from someone who is experimenting on their own brain with a sample size of one and no control group. How do you trust the results from an experiment conducted on the experimenter's brain? What if the experimenter loses the capacity to properly conduct the experiment in the process? How would you know the difference between that and he or she being incompetent in the first place, aside from the fact that they're attempting this in the first place?

teslaberry 10y ago

transcranial anything is nonsense for anything but identifying blot clots and macro structures in the brain. entire generations of brain research based on mri activation patterns are complete pseudoscientific bullshit, alleging scientific hypothesis about neural activation can be confirmed or falsified based on macro motions of blood in the brain. this is garbage. similarly , tdcs and other nonsense going through your 'skull' does not target what we know to be the factual cause of brain function, cellular micro structures of brain , in particular ; NEURONS. targeting macro anything in the brain may achieve an influence the same as firing a bullet into the brain may achieve an influence on the macro structures of the brain. this is garbage. tdcs is more garbage, but then , so is a some amount of what many scientific 'experts' call cognitive science. that said, this garbage is not terribly dangerous compared with the overprescription of antidepressants and painkillers i don't see why some neuroscientist is so concerned with the tdcs crowd other than the fact that he feels his legitimacy as an 'expert' is being insulted by the fake garage room engineering of transcranial garbage stingers. and to be sure, as far as drugs go, you're still better off taking a legitimate stimulant for performance enhancement. common sense dictates that TANSTAAFL with respect to performance enhancement. if TDCS is claiming they are providing your brain a freelunch stimulus without any come down or drawback. THEY ARE LYING. the common intution of brain enhancement is that the only way to 'enhance' your cognitive function without a comedown is to keep healthy , exercise , eat well, sleep well , and USE YOUR BRAIN like you use your muscles. THERE AINT NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH. any garage tinkerer or ivory tower idiot that says otherwise is lying or a fundamentalist ideological believer in XYZ...

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desireco42 10y ago

Frustration comes from how slow and opaque research in this area is. I think their warning is very appropriate and timely. Having said that, I think a lot of benefit can be had from transparent research.

etrautmann 10y ago

Neuroscientist here: Just listened to a talk from a reseacher who studied tDCS and tACS in human subjects, and found that IQ scores were actually going down relative to control groups. It's absolutely not clear what the appropriate protocols are, and behavioral outcomes could be incredibly sensitive to factors such as 1) electrode placement, 2) stimulation frequency, 3) amplitude, 4) direct or alternating current, etc. On top of that, benefits may come at the cost of other unobserved effects (i.e. faster learning and plasticity, accompanied by faster forgetting, to oversimplify).

amelius 10y ago
> IQ scores were actually going down By how much? If someone can trade severe anxiety for perhaps 5-10 IQ points, then in most cases they will probably sign up.
- nibs 10y ago
  Anxiety and high IQ are linked: http://www.livescience.com/36259-anxiety-linked-high-iq.html http://www.livescience.com/36259-anxiety-linked-high-iq.html so it is possible (I am speculating) that by reducing anxiety, you are reducing IQ. Not everyone wants to be smart, but it is not a decision I would take lightly. I wonder if you could perform the opposite operation, jacking up anxiety and IQ...
  - sbov 10y ago
    Even ignoring the whole "IQ = smart" thing, you can have a lower IQ and still have a high IQ.
    - unimpressive 10y ago
      This was not a well formulated sentence. I'll go ahead and clarify it some for other people reading and scratching their heads: >you can have a lower IQ and still have a high IQ You can lower your IQ and still have a high IQ. I.E going from 130 to 120 is different from going from 100 to 90.

kjell 10y ago

The first 40 minutes of this week's "Invisibilia" touches on the effects transcranial magnetic stimulation had on a woman who lived with undiagnosed aspergers for most of her life. > ALIX SPIEGEL, BYLINE: Until she was 54 years old, Kim (ph) was totally unaware that there were things in the world that she could not see. > KIM: Everything that was intended in this went completely over my head, and now I saw it - completely missed the meaning of the whole thing until after the TMS. And then I saw the whole thing clearly. http://www.npr.org/2016/07/07/485138695/invisibilia-an-experiment-helps-one-woman-see-the-world-in-a-new-way http://www.npr.org/2016/07/07/485138695/invisibilia-an-exper... (The TMS study "Kim" participated in took place at the same hospital that the co-author of this letter works, Beth Israel Deaconess.)

gr3yh47 10y ago
The linked transcript is fairly short and DEFINITELY worth a read. Very interesting stuff.
- holografix 10y ago
  There is a much longer and even more fascinating article here on HN about a similar case. You should search for it, if I was in front of a computer I'd find it for you. In it the man seems to have a lasting effect and is "cured" from Aspergers ends up splitting with his wife of I remember correctly.
  - rjeli 10y ago
    http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/an-experimental-autism-treatment-cost-me-my-marriage http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/an-experimental-aut...
dewarrn1 10y ago
Thank you for mentioning this — my podcast app didn't notify me that Season 2 was underway.

justsaysmthng 10y ago

A good idea would be to create a website were self experimenters can log their results, describe their setups, take tests and answer questionnaires. Similar to what erowid did for drugs back in the days - the self reported "trip reports". Of course - warn people that it's dangerous, etc etc, but people are still going to do it so why not use that as 'volunteer' experimental data.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
That's a start. But given that the report is subjective, and its a report on brain-altering drugs, as a data set its of questionable usefulness. E.g. all those that were changed to be hyper-focused will not be able to change their attention to reporting - so many will be missing from the reports. Others may become depressive and incapable of reporting as well. Its like "everybody who didn't survive the experiment, raise your hands!"

SShrike 10y ago

I had no idea people actually tried stuff like this.

rudedogg 10y ago

Apparently there's already commercial device for this. I came across a paper about it. “Unfocus” on foc.us: commercial tDCS headset impairs working memory - http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-015-4391-9 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-015-4391-9

gnoway 10y ago

The actual open letter: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.24689/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.24689/full

artifaxx 10y ago

Given that the human brain is full of electrical impulses it makes sense that external impulses can change our brains. The article mentions some people seeing the opposite results from the same protocol. It seems likely we will need more precise methods of stimulation to see better results given how complex our brains are.

lincolnpark 10y ago

I'm the one they featured in this article.. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7592_supp/full/531S6a.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7592_supp/full/53...

323454 10y ago
Has it worked for you before?

bcheung 10y ago

Peter: Egon, this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole in your head, remember that? Egon: That would have worked if you didn’t stop me.

smegel 10y ago

> a zapping session may produce an effect exactly the opposite of what's intended Sounds a lot like anti-depressant medication.

orionblastar 10y ago

My brothers and I saw a child psychiatrist in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She had stuck needles in our head and tried to treat us via electric shock for depression. We were all high functioning with above average intelligence. Ever since I had problems remebering names and faces of most people I met and other memory problems. She said we were too smart to have autism but high functioning autism wasn't discovered until later in the 1990s so we might have been misdiagnosed. It makes it hard for me to find work and be accepted.

ommunist 10y ago

Does wearing monitor headphones possess not obvious risks to your brain functions?

throwanem 10y ago
That depends on how badly miswired they are, I suppose.