4 ms·

AFAIK 70-80 human studies have been done on tDCS, most of them placebo-controlled. Here's a review on the topic from Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/11

AFAIK 70-80 human studies have been done on tDCS, most of them placebo-controlled. Here's a review on the topic from Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110413/full/472156a.html http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110413/full/472156a.html

dinkumthinkum 15y ago
So, the link you gave me is nice and it says this: "Overall, though, the optimism among tDCS's believers remains high." I'm sure it is but my point remains regardless of the votes. This research is very sparse and the benefits are not quite that clear and the possibility that these fairly unclear benefits could be the result of some kind of mental priming or other the should leave suspicion intact. Given the kind of claims being made, don't we need more than this? OK. Fine. Wonderous possibilities - transhumanism and all that. This is hardly a "proven" scientific thing and the benefits are somewhat murky. What I'm seeing on HN, surprisingly, are people talking about buying some contraption that purports to make them smarter and the CONSENSUS seems to be that that is entirely reasonable. Disturbing. More disturbing I'm seeing comments about people experimenting on themselves with crudely crafted contraptions and hurting themselves and others simply offering advice about voltage regulators and the like. This is clearly a "sucker born every minute" territory." I'm really surprised to see this on HN. I get the impression that I could post about some kind of startup in which I am going to disrupt biotech by curing cancer with some kind of Wi-Fi therapy and probably what I would get as a response is hints on how to optimize the timing protocols, reduce latency, and so forth.
- DanBC 15y ago
  You still haven't read the studies. Your point would be much more powerful if you linked to a study and showed where they had gone wrong. (That's not hard; they typically use very small sample sizes. It's hard to randomise the groups. How was the blinding done? How are the effects measured? What are the confidence ranges on the results.) But you should note that these are not quack journals and disreputable colleges - these are real journals and real researchers. Note that most of the reports are fair - "might be effective" and "deserves further investigation" tend not to be the language used by quacks. Maybe I've misunderstood your point?

dinkumthinkum 15y ago

So, the link you gave me is nice and it says this: "Overall, though, the optimism among tDCS's believers remains high." I'm sure it is but my point remains regardless of the votes. This research is very sparse and the benefits are not quite that clear and the possibility that these fairly unclear benefits could be the result of some kind of mental priming or other the should leave suspicion intact. Given the kind of claims being made, don't we need more than this? OK. Fine. Wonderous possibilities - transhumanism and all that. This is hardly a "proven" scientific thing and the benefits are somewhat murky. What I'm seeing on HN, surprisingly, are people talking about buying some contraption that purports to make them smarter and the CONSENSUS seems to be that that is entirely reasonable. Disturbing. More disturbing I'm seeing comments about people experimenting on themselves with crudely crafted contraptions and hurting themselves and others simply offering advice about voltage regulators and the like. This is clearly a "sucker born every minute" territory." I'm really surprised to see this on HN. I get the impression that I could post about some kind of startup in which I am going to disrupt biotech by curing cancer with some kind of Wi-Fi therapy and probably what I would get as a response is hints on how to optimize the timing protocols, reduce latency, and so forth.

DanBC 15y ago
You still haven't read the studies. Your point would be much more powerful if you linked to a study and showed where they had gone wrong. (That's not hard; they typically use very small sample sizes. It's hard to randomise the groups. How was the blinding done? How are the effects measured? What are the confidence ranges on the results.) But you should note that these are not quack journals and disreputable colleges - these are real journals and real researchers. Note that most of the reports are fair - "might be effective" and "deserves further investigation" tend not to be the language used by quacks. Maybe I've misunderstood your point?