Adventures in transcranial direct-current stimulation

newyorker.com

19 points·subnaught··6 comments

> in general, positive current stimulates neural activity while negative current inhibits it

I don't understand how this sentence can be right. Current is positive or negative w.r.t. a direction, right? Does the brain have some preferred direction, like positive being "along blood flow" and negative against?

Anyone out there tried anything with tDCS and programming - either personally or as a part of a scientific study?

I've personally played around with it, but I was not able to tell if the augmentation was the result of placebo or tcDCS. We have two Neuroscience PhDs that are advisors for our company and after talking more with them about my self experimentation I decided it was something I shouldn't be so cavalier about. tcDCS has measurable effects on plasticity among other things and plasticity is not always a good thing. They suggested mindfulness meditation as a much safer and well tested 'Brainhack'.

Interesting. Do your Neuroscience PhD's suggest this on the basis of "We know this is bad for you because X" or on the basis of "We don't know enough about it, and it might be bad for you"

The latter. Which is what I had honestly expected to hear. They did say it seems to be totally safe but, not enough longterm data has been gathered.

But what are the long-term effects of all this zapping?

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