Comment by iandanforth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iandanforth | Hacker News Reader

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This is near-quackery. The vagus nerve is composed of ~100k fibers of which about 80% are afferent fibers from organs. Each of the fibers conveys information in a fairly well ordered manner as do most neurons. Imagine if you will a highway with 100k lanes entering an absolutely massive city. Then you periodically turn on and off an earthquake machine which causes some cars on the roads to go faster, some to crash, and some to slow down. Then you observe the behavior of the city's economic output to see what happens. In one study one measure of the economy increases and you publish a paper about it.

There is both a scale disconnect (the signal being introduced by the electrodes vs the thousands of isolated communication channels which operate independently) and a causal disconnect (you have no idea what happens between the disruption and the observed behavior). A lot of TMS studies suffer from these methodological flaws as well.

Rather than saying things like this "opens the door to improving cognitive performance across a wide range of domains" they should be saying "we have no idea why this works at all, and you should absolutely not try this at home."

A simpler and cheaper brain-stimulating intervention to improve language learning has been known in the literature since 1972. No fancy electronics necessary.

“The results of this study are interpreted as confirming the hypothesis that the ingestion of small amounts of alcohol, under certain circumstances, does lead to increased ability to authentically pronounce a second language.”[1]

Note that the improvement only happens after consuming exactly 1.5oz of cognac. Anything more than that and performance drops precipitously.

[1]https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/3404...

Ah, they found Ballmer's peak before its time!

For those wondering: https://xkcd.com/323/

Anecdotally, phenibut has the same effect without being so sensitive to getting the right dosage.

It should also be mentioned that phenibut can create very serious dependency issues if taken regularly.

> Note that the improvement only happens after consuming exactly 1.5oz of cognac. Anything more than that and performance drops precipitously.

Anecdotally, this appears to be true for billiards as well.

Does it have to be cognac, or can I use some other brandy?

Per the paper, the treatment was actually a punch that was half liquor, half other things. The liquor was a mix of cognac and light and dark rums.

And what about whisky?

Vagus nerve stimulation (noninvasive or surgical implants) is used to treat many conditions like pain, epilepsy and depression. Vagus nerve stimulation is also used to tread bad cluster headaches.

ps. Nerve stimulation is more targeted and precise than psychiatric medications. Meds just go everywhere.

These two statements - this one and the parent post's - are entirely compatible.

It's amazing how often treatments are introduced, and even become quite popular, despite being supported by only scant evidence. Sometimes this leads to good outcomes, sometimes, not so much.

One could make a strong argument that a more liberal approach, even outright grasping at straws, makes sense if you're dealing with a serious condition like chronic pain, epilepsy, or depression, and more proven treatments have already been tried without success.

It's maybe not so clear that it's wise to use an intervention that's also supposed to be effective for major ailments like pain, epilepsy, and depression, just because a preliminary-looking study with low statistical power says it might help you burn through your Anki deck 13% faster. Side effects do happen.

Desperation is a big driver. Medical doctors quickly give up on anything tricky. When your in horrific agony, and you can see a doctor for 5 minutes every three months. Well people find other sources of information.

Facebook and reddit groups are a wealth of finding out what options are available and how they might affect you. There is a lot of “quack” info in the groups. But also a lot of great tips.

Topomax is a common example. Major side effect is it makes people stupid. Not everyone, but a large percentage. Neurologists often fail to mention this.

What does "noninvasive or surgical implants" mean?

Anything without peer reviewed multiple intergenerational studies would not trust worth. All these new biohack tech I would only consider them to be an experiment. It is find that you want to volunteer for the, just treat them as an experiment and accept the risk involved.

Parent is not arguing that Nerve stimulation is not used.

The argument is (as with many of these therapies) that it is rare to have robust enough methodologies when testing this and that the positive effects claimed are often null/negligible or worse non-reproducible.

Arguing peripheral nerve stimulation is effective because it is used as a therapy, gives it as much evidence-based robustness as homeopathy.

> The argument is (as with many of these therapies) that it is rare to have robust enough methodologies when testing this and that the positive effects claimed are often null/negligible or worse non-reproducible.

parent did not argue that. The parent criticized the method and did not challenge the result.

> Imagine if you will a highway with 100k lanes entering an absolutely massive city.

Name me any medical drug that doesn't work by statistics.

Your post reminded me of "Can a biologist fix a radio?", [1].

[1] https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/pdf/S1535-6108(02)00133-2.p...

Does it do any lasting damage? Then why not try it? Lots of things 'stimulate nerves' including playing the piano or typing. If typing while learning Mandarin, improved your Mandarin, would we be admonishing the experimenter?

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