Do It Yourself Brain Stimulation has Scientists Worried

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/12/transcranial-direct-current-stimulation-tdcs-technology/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NP_Top_Stories+%28National+Post+-+Top+Stories%29

by hexagonc • 13 years ago

104 115 13 years ago

news.nationalpost.com

Telomer• 13 years ago

There is a subreddit for this if you feel like reading more http://www.reddit.com/r/tDCS/

wisty• 13 years ago

With the warning on the subreddit: Caution: you can be killed by a 9V battery

Ygg2• 13 years ago

You can be killed by a 9V battery? How? Not from the charge I hope (not sarcastic).

guylhem• 13 years ago

"Scientists call for more regulation (ie more grant $) before the devices is sold to the public, film at 11."

The only problem is the DIY crowd. A 9V battery is not exactly under regulation. What people do with their body is their problem.

rosser• 13 years ago

What people do with their body is their problem.

Tell that to the people behind drug laws, and abortion laws, and sodomy laws, and, and, and...

rmc3• 13 years ago

Or trans people, who have to jump through hoops to get hormones or surgery.

juskrey2• 13 years ago

If something can make your body better without adverse effects, it is already there. You are not smarter than 3.5 billions of life evolution, period.

ultramundane84• 13 years ago

This reads like a form of faith. I don't share it. Is there literally no potential for artificial selection to outpace natural selection?

I know this thinking can be dangerous and contains serious ethical problems, but the factual side of your statement I just can't agree with. Not without more to convince me.

gwern8• 13 years ago

Is there literally no potential for artificial selection to outpace natural selection?

Of course there's potential and loopholes but the basic observation (dubbed 'Algernon's law' by some; I've written an entire essay on the topic: http://www.gwern.net/Drug%20heuristics ) seems sound for tDCS: it's such a trivial intervention that it shouldn't work, which suggests there must be some catch.

The catch may well be trivial from our modern perspective, in the same way that staying up late or using stimulants and so burning some more calories is a trivial catch from the modern perspective ("'oh no', said the fat American man, 'you mean X might cause me to burn some more calories? how awful'"), but until the catch has been identified, tDCS has not been fully understood.

srin• 13 years ago

Well, you're a product of that, so your brain being able to come up with methods of augmentation that are faster than waiting for the "evolutionary process is the 3.5 billions of life evolution" is a product of all that evolution

We make our body better all the time, sometimes there are adverse effects, but that's just more to work on

teraflop• 13 years ago

Evolution doesn't find a global optimum. It probably doesn't even find a local optimum, because constantly changing environments create a moving target for selection pressure.

pkroll• 13 years ago

I get what you're saying, and basically agree. But... A) how much of an adverse effect? And B) Plenty of medical procedures can "make your body better without adverse effects" (at least not as adverse as the medical condition continuing on unchecked).

juskrey2• 13 years ago

Ah, at least. Yeah, medical procedures can make you better. In case your condition is acute. But we have no single medicine that will make healthy human better for a lifetime. Well, single medicated "you" MAY outlive "you" without a medicine, but that is a play of statistics, in general there is no force to tell ya if you will suffer instead. Even a vaccine is a simulation of acute condition, but the key for this effect is single stimulation.

gwern8• 13 years ago

Plenty of them are outright harmful too, of course, and this is even after a century of randomized experiments and 'evidence-based medicine' weeding out the worst of the crap. But the medicine that works falls handily under one of the loopholes laid out (exercise for the reader: vaccines work amazingly well. Why hasn't evolution already done the work of a vaccine in humans and what loophole does this argument fall under?)

rollo_tommasi• 13 years ago

This seems to be at odds with the existence of tools.

tapp• 13 years ago

Really? The polio vaccine made my body better without adverse effects, and there are literally hundreds of other examples.

Evolution is a process, not an endpoint - - it seems highly unlikely that no further improvements to the human body are possible.

ketralnis• 13 years ago

You are not smarter than 3.5 billions of life evolution

That makes a great bumper sticker, but I don't buy it.

Evolution isn't directed. Humans are the product of something that happened to survive in some very specific circumstances. Lots of other things did too: sloths, flies, sea sponges. I'd rather be me than a sea sponge. Maybe there's a potential X that would rather be an X than me.

There are no evolutionary pressures on "I'd rather be".

waterlesscloud• 13 years ago

A bumper sticker on your vehicle that carries you at least an order of magnitude faster than evolution can carry you?

pjscott• 13 years ago

Here's a much more detailed discussion of this idea, and possible loopholes:

http://www.gwern.net/Drug%20heuristics

For example, evolution could easily have failed to make enhancements that would burn too many calories, because food used to be scarce.

munificent• 13 years ago

Well shit. Should I just take my glasses off now then?

ChuckMcM3• 13 years ago

I am convinced that at some point some smart sod will figure out how to create a 'high' by using something along the lines of this. Put on a headband, flick the switch, and blam! high as a kite. Turn the switch off, and back to being sober.

When that happens, the world will change in a very unpredictable way. Billions, perhaps trillions of dollars that are part of the drug trade will suddenly have no where to go. All the social aspects of shared inebriation will still be in place but most if not all of the economic aspects will be killed.

I expect my kids will get to witness this change.

msluyter• 13 years ago

I think what you've just described is Larry Niven's "wirehead."

In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, a wirehead is someone who has been fitted with an electronic brain implant (called a "droud" in the stories) to stimulate the pleasure centres of their brain. In the Known Space universe, wireheading is the most addictive habit known (Louis Wu is the only given example of a recovered addict), and wireheads usually die from neglecting themselves in favour of the ceaseless pleasure. Wireheading is so powerful and easy that it becomes an evolutionary pressure, selecting against that portion of Known Space humanity without self-control. Wireheading need not use an actual brain implant; the pleasure centre can be remotely activated by a small device called a "tasp" (important in the Ringworld novels).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)

gwern8• 13 years ago

We already have wireheading, but the surgery is too invasive for it to be anything but an obscure curiosity.

RobotCaleb2• 13 years ago

For a slightly different take on it, see the Red Dwarf Novel "Better than Life"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Than_Life

jholman• 13 years ago

Also explored at length in God Is An Iron, a short story by Spider Robinson, extended into the novel Mindkiller. Unlike in Ringworld, where wireheading/tasps are a MacGuffin, they're the central plot point in GIAI/Mindkiller.

ryanmcbride• 13 years ago

This is what I thought of immediately too.

martythemaniak• 13 years ago

Something like it exists (or is claimed to exist)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet

larrys2• 13 years ago

"Billions, perhaps trillions of dollars that are part of the drug trade "

Serious question. If the friction is removed (illegality is friction) and this process is legal and available what will prevent people from deteriorating into 24/7 pleasure seekers (much like some people get addicted and spend their life in crack houses?)

ChuckMcM3• 13 years ago

It's an excellent question, I don't think its possible to predict the outcome. In places where heroin is both easily available (low friction) and there is little social stigma attached to it, you get folks wasting away in opium dens, but not everyone who could be in those dens, are.

No doubt a lot will depend on how functional folks can be while 'high'. I have known people who were essentially 'pill heads' or addicted to oxycodone such that they were constantly under the influence but they were still able to do the job assigned to them. (I make no judgement as to whether their performance was improved or hampered by their drug use). Perhaps folks could dial it up or dial it down depending on their need.

But what scares policy maker types is that you have an unpredictable effect if something comes into existence. They will try hard to prevent its creation because of the possibility of bad outcomes even in the presence of the possibility of good outcomes (perhaps you'd have lower workplace rage events if people could dial in a mild soporific state).

grannyg00se• 13 years ago

But without the illegality and high cost, it's not so bad. You get a bunch of people hanging out high without all the robbery, extortion, prostitution, and organized crime.

A bunch of harmless pleasure seekers doesn't seem like a major issue without all that other stuff.

glenra6• 13 years ago

Where cocaine was legal, people used the cocoa leaf to make a tea they drank all the time, the way we drink coffee or caffeinated soda. When heroin was legal (from the Bayer company!), addicts took it in pill form and it caused no particular social or financial or health problems - the primary negative effect of long-term heroin use is constipation.

The vast majority of the harm illegal drugs do to people is due to the drugs being illegal; it has nothing to do with characteristics inherent to the chemistry of the drugs.

(I recommend the book Licit and Illicit Drugs. You can read it here online: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumen... )

networked• 13 years ago

"[T]hough we may not want to be wireheaded now, our wireheaded selves would probably prefer to be wireheaded."

The Less Wrong community has been discussing questions related to wireheading for years now. To get a taste for their discussion on the subject check out the post at http://lesswrong.com/lw/1oc/you_cannot_be_mistaken_about_not... (where the above quote comes from) and everything it links to.

Ihmahr• 13 years ago

Arn't most of us '24/7 pleasure seekers' even though we don't use drugs?

jlgreco2• 13 years ago

I don't know. That is basically the concept around synthehol from Star Trek, but I have never been convinced that such a substance would actually be as good as alcohol. Being able to easily "turn it off" does not seem particularly desirable to me, part of the allure of alcohol is a submission of sorts. Making the decision to not be able to make rational decisions, with no tap-out.

Edit: Figure out how to do it with other sorts of drugs, like non-recreational stimulants, and I would be all over it. Caffeine that I can turn off when I get home? Yes please.

Jun8• 13 years ago

I wouldn't expect anything to change, governments will declare it illegal and that device will be the new drug.

Note that there's nothing expensive about drugs, I remember reading that the cost of manufacturing a gram of cocaine is about 50 cents

halorhodopsin2• 13 years ago

i'm not convinced. the "high" of alcohol and benzodiazepenes is caused by GABA receptor agonism. the "high" of MDMA is caused by serotonin reuptake inhibition and dopamine release. the "high" of Ketamine is caused by NMDA receptor antagonism. the "high" of psychedelics like LSD or DMT are caused by a unique cocktail of selective agonism of serotonin, dopamine, and adrenergic receptor subtypes, and so on.

the one common element is that all "highs" are caused by ligands with very specific molecular properties binding to neurotransmitters. a headband will never be able to bind to a neurotransmitter.

ChuckMcM3• 13 years ago

It is true you cannot bind to a neurotransmitter from a headband. The research that these efforts are based on involved direct activation of the neuron ganglia by inducing currents in them through the absorption of electromagnetic energy (in the case of DBS) and by increasing electron flow in the case of tDCS).

Hiker and Voger's work [1] (and a bunch of others, just look for DBS and dopamine) which looks at Dopamine response and Gandiga and Hummel [2] who look at tDCS and whether its effects are effective in neuroretraining, or in the case of our hobbyists, enhancing existing neurotraining.

[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mds.10297/abstrac...

[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1388245705...

s_baby3• 13 years ago

psychedelics like LSD or DMT are caused by a unique cocktail of selective agonism of serotonin, dopamine, and adrenergic receptor subtypes, and so on.

LSD breaks down almost instantly in the body yet the effects continue on for 10-12 hours. Receptor binding might be a trigger for these states but it's a stretch to say it's central to the bio-molecular cascade that then produces these states.

anigbrowl2• 13 years ago

dollars that are part of the drug trade will suddenly have no where to go

I'm long on tie-dye. People will still enjoy advertising what sort of highs they enjoy.

ultramundane84• 13 years ago

I may run into a lot of experts (from multiple fields) here on HN with strong opinions to the contrary, but here are my two cents.

If I could double my cognitive ability for 5 years, then die from an unknown complication with this type of therapy, I would do it without blinking an eye.

zem• 13 years ago

it would be deeply ironic if, with your doubled cognitive ability, you realised that that was a bad bargain.

ultramundane84• 13 years ago

Haha, yes it would. But likely my ability would at least enable me to convince others of this discovery!

toomuchtodo7• 13 years ago

I'm both a tCDS user and a Modafinil user. I'm 30, and don't mind trading life expectancy for higher cognitive function.

gtani3• 13 years ago

do you think you can develop (stronger) synesthesia?

gojomo• 13 years ago

Are you already over 60, or cognitively impaired?

If not, that's an awful lot of life to give up. What utility do you expect from doubling your cognitive ability? (Are the people you observe with far more cognitive ability than you always more happy/effective?)

You're also giving up value from the potential that the enhancement-without-death will become available in year 6.

gtani3• 13 years ago

That's sort of the choice Marco Pantani and Paul Erdős made (Pantani is the bike racer with the highest recorded power (sustained wattage) outputs in the Tour de France, and passed away at the age of 34. He is still recorded as the 1998 Tour and Giro d'Italia winner, not having been nabbed for any drug positives before the era of strict testing in the sport

http://velonews.competitor.com/2013/06/news/new-report-prese...

Erdős took amphetamines for the last 25 years of his life (he lived to 83)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

asifjamil• 13 years ago

I'm actually a PhD student studying this exact technology in Germany. I can say without a doubt that this type of stimulation has proven potential in enhancing cognitive functions (if proper protocol and safety aspects are respected). This is a really exciting field which I think will really explode in the next few years once the montage and paradigms are optimized (which is exactly what I'm working on!)

tassl• 13 years ago

Can you point to some (respected) publications on the field that can prove cognitive enhancement?

toomuchtodo7• 13 years ago

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=transcranial+direct...

toomuchtodo7• 13 years ago

As an IT professional with enough EE knowledge to be dangerous, I've used a home made version to increase the rate at which I learn foreign languages.

yathern2• 13 years ago

Care to shed more information on this? How well did it work? Were the effects long term or temporary?

jasonkolb• 13 years ago

My father in law had a stroke about a year back and I looked into this to see if anyone was doing any research into stimulating parts of the brain which were harmed. I wasn't able to find much. I'm curious if you've ever seen anyone studying therapeutic uses for this technology?

tehwalrus• 13 years ago

Of course, if you zap the wrong part of your brain you could also decrease your cognitive skills.

I'll wait until there's more evidence before I break out the soldering iron.

caycep• 13 years ago

I don't think he can do too much damage brain wise - the effects of the noninvasive transcranial magnetic/direct current stimulation only last for a few hours anyway.

The bigger issue is potentially getting skin burns by not getting the circuitry hooked up correctly. Or maybe frying your electronic gadgets if you have a magnetic stim device. I guess maybe you could theoretically trigger seizures if you have epilepsy, but in that case you'd be seeing a doctor regularly anyway and wouldn't have to DIY these things.

qdot76367• 13 years ago

So there's already a tDCS helmet headed toward the consumer market sometime in the next couple of months, aimed at "gamers" because that doesn't really look as suspicious as making health claims.

http://foc.us

DanBC2• 13 years ago

Mr. Siever treats himself for chronic depression, reporting equally striking results.

I wish they wouldn't report such anecdota so strongly. Siever is unlikely to have conducted controlled double-blind studies on himself, so he can't know it's the tCDS doing anything or not.

senorprogrammer• 13 years ago

Agreed. It's just as feasible that the beneficial effect is derived from his sense of taking control over his condition rather than being controlled by it (effectively feeling like an active rather than passive participant in his depression). I make no claim that this is actually the reason, only to provide one feasible, untested alternative theory.

Further scientific study in this field should be very interesting indeed.

glenra6• 13 years ago

You don't actually need a controlled double-blind study to notice a medical effect, IF the effect is sufficiently strong and consistent. Traditional "controlled double-blind studies" are nice to have, but are much too likely to accidentally reject good medicines and medical treatments of the sort that might be discovered and confirmed via this sort of personal experimentation. (Yes, false positives are bad, but false negatives are bad too!)

The era of personalized medicine is just beginning and these sort of devices seem unusually well-suited for that sort of approach.

glenra6• 13 years ago

UPDATE: I'm getting downvoted, most likely from people who don't know what I'm referring to. So let me clarify: The platonic ideal of a traditional drug or medical treatment is something that works the same way on EVERYBODY. When you do a controlled double-blind study, you specify one specific treatment regimen - use dose X as a function of unit mass or of condition severity - and test whether that (a) has a statistically significant effect which (b) beats the control.

Now imagine a drug which has this effect: half the time it makes people better (often quite a bit better). 30% of the time it has no effect, and 20% of the time it has a NEGATIVE effect - it makes people WORSE along the metric being measured.

(one example of a treatment that has this sort of outcome pattern: exercise. If you measure blood pressure or cholesterol levels, it helps many but hurts some (about 12%) and has no effect on others(about 20%))

A double-blind study of THAT sort of intervention will find a low AVERAGE effect because the AVERAGE includes the nonresponders and the negative responders.

In contrast, a "quantified self" personal science study where somebody carefully tracks their statistic and tries out an intervention while doing some A/B comparisons, is likely to discover whether they ARE or ARE NOT a positive responder. If they ARE, further experimentation can help find the best dose regimen for their particular situation.

(of course, if we knew and could measure exactly which factors make some people positive responders and others negative responders, then we could test in the traditional way. But until we DO know that, studying at the individual level is often the best or even the only available way to figure out how to help individuals.)

As for my "IF the effect is sufficiently strong and consistent" bit, I'll just note that big controlled studies are sometimes abandoned when an intervention is SO successful it is deemed unethical to deny the treatment to the control group.

rmc3• 13 years ago

Exactly, it could be the placebo effect.

kunai• 13 years ago

The scientific method has advanced so far in the past century that any new "breakthrough" without proper empirical evidence and due process of science makes me feel like it's just quack science.

Forget about the journals, forget about peer review, just have evidence. Anecdota have proven to be very unreliable in critical testing scenarios.

beagle32• 13 years ago

So has so called "evidence". Can't google right now, but recently someone tried and failed to reproduce ~60% of celebrated cancer results published in Science & Nature from the last 20 years. Also, ionaddis has shown most published research in medicine and nutrition to be wrong.

"Publish or perish" has replaced the gold of gold standard with tungsten, with everyone related aware of it, but no one doing anything about it.

zxcdw• 13 years ago

I remember the amount of non-reproducible research was as high as 90 %? Google returns some hits from May 7th(and I remember the HN post from around a month ago, we talk about the same thing I think) or so with that title, but perhaps the actual number is somewhere between 60 and 90 %?

DannoHung• 13 years ago

I think I'd want some longitudinal studies before I tried this.

gtani3• 13 years ago

I'm no scientist but anecdotal TDCS had me... concerned

     induce phosphenes by accident -- blue white flashes in the entire visual field,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3525744

toomuchtodo7• 13 years ago

When it occurs, its not as bad as it sounds. This is my own experience though. YMMV.

jurassic• 13 years ago

I applaud these DIYers. If there's one thing my PhD stint taught me, it's that the high stakes nature of dead ends in one's science career has forced most scientists to be extremely conservative in what they write grants for. I fully expect the next large advances in biohacking to emerge from people working in their garages and hackerspaces while collaborating online, not from a lab on NSF funding.

Qantourisc• 13 years ago

Wait what polarity reversed ? Current goes from A to B, so it doesn't quite matter ! So side B from the skull is negative and A is positive, unless you reverse it, then it's reversed ... But regardless one side will always be "reversed"...

So the question is rather where you want the current to go exactly, but if "reversing" the polarity is bad, it's safe to say EVERYTHING is bad. (Unless you don't mind destroying a part of the brain to get to another part.)

Do It Yourself Brain Stimulation has Scientists Worried

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