tDCS

[Sad, little man]

What do you guys think about it? It's sad that we don't know enough about the brain to be able to tell if it's truly beneficial and above all safe, because it seems like it could carry some real promise.

[thesameguy]

Recreational ECT? Let's do it.

[Sad, little man]

No, it's much much less current than ECT.

ECT is intended to induce a seizure, and it's higher voltage and about 600 milliamps. tDCS is between 0.5 and 2 milliamps.

[thesameguy]

Less equipment, less current = less supervision = recreational?

[Sad, little man]

Saying these are the same thing is like saying a pillow fight is the same thing as an MMA match.

[Rare White Ape]

My go-to site for this sort of question seems to be www.sciencebasedmedicine.org and they happen to have something brief on this from 2013:

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/brain-stimulation-for-the-masses/

Summary: it's not well researched but generally safe. What research is available shows mixed results, so more research is needed. But be weary of the usual lineup of companies who are eager to sell this to you while making claims that they can't back up.

Seems to me like it hasn't been able to transcend the most basic pseudoscientific claims of it's proponents, so right now it's money out of your pocket for little to no reward. I'd ignore it. Plus the fact that psychologists aren't all over it raises alarm bells for me.

[thesameguy]

I remember when they sold this technology to BULK UP YOUR ABS.

[Kchrpm]

I just recently read a review of one of those electric ab stimulator things that said they work, but not how they're advertised to work (aka "from flab to abs with no exercise!"). They're not going to give you a flat stomach or get rid of your love handles, they just stimulate your ab muscles enough for them to be stronger. You won't see any difference unless you've already gotten rid of everything on top of it.

Also, unsurprisingly, it's a rather unpleasant experience.

[Sad, little man]

tsg, can we at least agree that a muscle tends to function slightly differently from the brain?

Also, I wouldn't spend tons of cash on any of these fancy commercial products. I would just build my own, as there are many plans for this online.

Now, just to stem off the whole "OMG you're even stupider if you'd build one of these yourself" talk, let me point out two things:

A) No one really knows how this shit works, so any company claiming to make a device superior to another one really has no clue.

B) I would much rather trust my brain to something I personally built and understand the workings of, rather than some magic box that I have no idea about.

[Kchrpm]

This sounds like the origin story of a Batman villain.

[thesameguy]

Ordinary man turned into a super villain by a transcranial stimulator of his own devising? You betcha.

[FaultyMario]

Aren't electrostimulators good for physiothreapy though?, looking at you Tyler...

[Kchrpm]

Ordinary man turned into a super villain by a transcranial stimulator of his own devising? You betcha.

What would his name be? Shock Top? Sparks? Electro? Wait, that's already been done.

[thesameguy]

I'd go with a play on his electricity-induced superhuman brain. But, he's also an evil maniac. Something like Maniain or something?

[Sad, little man]

I need a good back story though... Like maybe I wanted to use electrical brain stimulation to become the most caring and compassionate person on earth, but I got the wires backwards, so it turned me into a monster.

Then, for the whole movie, the audience is always wondering if maybe somewhere there is still some shred of good inside me.

[Kchrpm]

I like your original backstory better, that you see a popular technology that you think you can build better at home. No delusions of grandeur, just a little project similar to a bunch of other ones you've successfully built.

But this one changes you somehow. A little at first, but it's a cascading problem. You go from a mild mannered tinkerer to an obsession-driven zealot, hell bent on unlocking the potential of everyone in Gotham by sending electrical signals through their cellphones. Every time they answer a call and put their phone up to their head, they receive a jolt that turns them into one of your soldiers.

Pretty soon there's an insurgent army that's not evil, or crazy, but all now an unshakeable sense that everyone around them needs to unlock their potential.

[Godson]

Aren't electrostimulators good for physiothreapy though?, looking at you Tyler...

Short answer, yes. Long answer is above my education and pay grade on a multifaceted grouping of criteria.

[Sad, little man]

I like your original backstory better, that you see a popular technology that you think you can build better at home. No delusions of grandeur, just a little project similar to a bunch of other ones you've successfully built.

But this one changes you somehow. A little at first, but it's a cascading problem. You go from a mild mannered tinkerer to an obsession-driven zealot, hell bent on unlocking the potential of everyone in Gotham by sending electrical signals through their cellphones. Every time they answer a call and put their phone up to their head, they receive a jolt that turns them into one of your soldiers.

Pretty soon there's an insurgent army that's not evil, or crazy, but all now an unshakeable sense that everyone around them needs to unlock their potential.

Ooooo, so it's like one of those movies where I'm the bad person, but I think I'm actually good? And then Batman hunts me down and I end up getting cornered by Batman in a burning warehouse and then I die? But then in the rubble they find something that proves that I was good? And then Batman has to wrestle with the idea that he killed a good person so maybe he's bad? But no, he's totally good, because he's Batman...

[thesameguy]

Yeah, but the sequel is you didn't die because your homebrew brain stimulator saved a copy of you by accident, which is only discovered after the daughter you didn't know you had is contacted by the executor of your will and starts going through your shit.

[Kchrpm]

I like where you guys are going :up:

[Sad, little man]

Well, here's an update. To make this completely safe, even though the design includes a current regulator, there really should be some other type of protection against over-current.

This application requires a device that will limit current at very low levels. I found some fuses that are fast acting and rated at low enough currents, but they were originally developed for use in the space program, and are pretty expensive. I'm going to use current limiting diodes instead. They are cheaper, and unlike a fuse, they won't fail permanently if the current level is exceeded. Again, this is unlikely since the whole thing will be current regulated electronically anyway, and there will be a meter showing the current level.

No clue if I'll actually take the plunge and try this, but it's fun to build it and know that I could.

[LHutton]

A more economic method is to annoy cops until they tase you.


*Can cause death, always read the label.


:p

[Sad, little man]

I have all the parts I need for this except one, which appears to be held up in customs in Chicago. I'm going to start assembling it anyway. I'm trying to think of what kind of enclosure I should put it in. Because I'm a weirdo, I was thinking it would be fun to find something like this to put it in.

http://gtxforums.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1560&d=1452646313

1560

Because nothing says demented like an electrical brain stimulation device inside a little girl's jewelry box. Ideally you would twist the little ballerina back and forth to regulate the current.

[Sad, little man]

Philosophical question... If this process alters the brain, would it truly be considered an unnatural alteration since it was originally a person's brain which made the decision to make this alteration?

I would say yes, because the precise outcome was not known when the decision was made, only the fact that the brain would become better somehow.

[Godson]

Or worse

[Sad, little man]

I may or may not have built this and I may or may not have used it on my head last night.

[Sad, little man]

Verdict? It does feel like this affects the function of the brain.

My concern is that I can't help but feel that doing this is akin to plugging a microprocessor into a wall socket. It's a very blunt method of affecting the functions of the brain that we do not understand as of yet. So, my conclusion is that I'm somewhat afraid to continue using something so imprecise which has the power to affect the way my brain functions. I may have to throw this thing into a dark corner of a closet.

It's sad because I could envision that in 50 years or so we will have the knowledge and technology to positively affect the electrical functions of the brain much more precisely.

[Godson]

The biggest issue with this, is we still know fuck all about the brain.

[Crazed_Insanity]

If you have a spare brain, by all means, ticker with it and have fun.

However, since you don't have a spare brain, maybe experimenting with it isn't the greatest idea...

BTW, just out of curiosity, exactly how it affected the brain function? How did you feel that? Please share! Don't let this research be in vain! :p

[Sad, little man]

Eh, it's complicated.

I will say for now though, how is this truly any different from any number of prescribed or recreational drugs? If we know so little about the brain, how can we say "Well, if you throw these chemicals at it, it will do exactly what we want it to and it's safe." in the case of prescribed psychological drugs. But then we can't extend the same amount of acceptance for using electricity to alter the brain's function. It makes no sense.

[Godson]

Because we aren't exactly sure on how a lot of those psychotropic drugs act on. We only have a basic idea.

[Dicknose]

Apply electricity to the scalp is not the best way to access the brain.
It's not like it's "let me stimulate this part of the brain"

[Rare White Ape]

If we know so little about the brain, how can we say "Well, if you throw these chemicals at it, it will do exactly what we want it to and it's safe." in the case of prescribed psychological drugs. But then we can't extend the same amount of acceptance for using electricity to alter the brain's function. It makes no sense.

The chemicals (in this case, drugs) produce a significant and measurable effect in a short amount of time, over minutes, hours and days. We can easily record what happens and use this to determine the effect we want vs. what the side effects are. We can also control the dosage and see what changes with different people quite easily. Over longer time scales, long term effects can also be seen and this effects the way drugs are administered to new patients. You might see stuff in the news about drug trials for new medicine and this is my understanding of what the basic process is. The safety part comes in when researchers find out what issues arise, assess the risk, and weigh that up against the benefits.

Zapping your brain with low voltage, however, produces little to no measurable effects, and over a very long time scale of decades, with little to no benefit. This is why it's not well understood, due to the difficulty in observing the changes. There are some studies out there (see the link I posted previously) that have seen some possible benefits but the level of evidence for this is nowhere near that required to form real 'proof' that it actually works. If it did potentially work, then companies would be all over it to get it medically certified and used in the medical industry to, you know, make money from it. For now only DIY-ers like yourself and woo-peddlers are into it. They sell them in alt-med shops and put them near the cancer-killing kale superfoods, next to the salt lamps, which do nothing.

[thesameguy]

My friend's cancer was cured with a hybrid kale lamp, so don't say it does nothing.

[Sad, little man]

Ok, I did want to write something regarding this, I just hadn't gotten around to it.

Let me say firstly... If I thought that my brain functioned normally, if I thought it worked properly, I probably wouldn't have been so keen to do this.

So anyway, after a few days of using it once a day, I sensed maybe a little bit of a change. But then, one Friday morning, I work up, and something had really changed. It was odd because I had used it the previous evening, and it didn't seem to really hit until the next morning, as soon as I woke up. To sum it up, pretty much all emotions became dulled. All of the peaks and valleys were somewhat smoothed out.

First, I had to keep reminding myself it was Friday and not Saturday. I'm not quite sure why. I think maybe it was that I didn't really have that "Oh shit, I have to get up and go to work" feeling in my head. I mean, I knew it was Friday, but it didn't quite really register. So, it felt sort of like a weekend. But, I definitely knew it was Friday. So I got ready for work.

Taking a shower, I can just remember thinking of all of the things that were on my mind. And, good or bad, they just didn't have much of an effect on me. I guess it was almost meditative in a way. Thoughts just went through my head, and I could think about them, but regardless of whether they were good or bad things, they didn't make me really feel good or bad. In a way it was nice, calm. But the fact that I couldn't really feel strong emotions either way was concerning. I felt like I lost a little bit of my humanity.

I'm happy to report though that it seemed to wear off throughout the day. In fairly short order I was back to my "normal" self. The fact that I felt I had altered my brain function using electricity kind of freaked me out though, and I haven't used it since.

[thesameguy]

Curious, does your tDCS look like this?

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/11/7c/3e/117c3ee2f692b999f72ca8833b848020.jpg

[LHutton]

TRUS

[Sad, little man]

No. It's not that.

[Kchrpm]

This is totally a villain's backstory.

[Godson]

Likely culprit of being a bit numb is from the off chance the amount of resting neurotransmitters in your body had been somewhat reduced.

[Sad, little man]

As in, not sleeping well? Explain please.

[Godson]

I'll need more information. Pm me please and I'll go in depth.

[thesameguy]

This is totally a villain's backstory.

"I just stopped caring about the impact of my actions."