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Home Articles Reviews Videos App Store Book Shop Forum Transcranial Stimulation and its Promise By Adam Sinicki Our brain works much like a computer and is in a way a giant circuit. That is to say that our neurons are wired in such a way that they communicate via electrical impulses and that these can be activated by running a charge through them (not too large a charge of course or you'll just end up with kentucky fried brain... we're talking a few hundred milliamps). This is true of all nerves, which is why if you place electrical pads on your biceps (and the muscle fibres therein) then they tense and you get a workout, as you will have seen. What's far more impressive though is that you can do this exact same thing with the human brain – run an electrical current through a certain area and you can cause that area to fire and set off a whole area of the brain. Meanwhile similar techniques can be used to inhibit areas of the brain from firing, and this then means that those brain areas are shut off. Deep Brain Stimulation This then has allowed for scientists to study with what is known as 'deep brain stimulation'. This is a system whereby they can use electrodes deep within the brain in order to see what certain brain areas do specifically. Usually this would be achieved by observing stroke patients and other patients who needed brain surgery – while their skulls were open and their brains were exposed researchers would then be able to stimulate certain brain areas using these electrodes and ask the patient what results they experienced. In turn this lead to deep brain stimulation as a treatment for a host of conditions such as depression, obesity, addiction and epilepsy. Here a surgeon would implant an electrode deep within the brain permanently and then connect it to a power source that was powered by a device kept under the collarbone. This can then stimulate/inhibit the necessary brain area in order to alter the patient's behaviour or experiences and it has been very successful in treating those conditions. Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation However, this is a transhumanism article and so of course we're not interested in curing depression (of course I wish all depressed people the best of luck) – we're interested in treating the human condition in order to be smarter, faster, better and stronger like a cover of the Daft Punk song. Of course there are problems with using deep brain stimulation for transhumanism – the main one being that most of us don't want an electronic circuit in our collar bone, and that most of us don't want to have to have our brain cut open to benefit from the transhuman effects. It would be annoying to have to have your head spliced open every time you wanted an upgrade... Further in my study of transhuman ethics I found that people were far more comfortable with transhuman technologies that were reversible or only semi-permanent. So it's a good thing that we have transcranial direct current stimulation – which can effect our brain through our scalps. This requires us to wear some sort of hat or pads – yes just like the one that we described for working out – and then use this to deliver those tiny shocks (I don't recommend using an exercise pad on your head – I tried that and I got a headache). Of course it's not quite as accurate as DBS, but it is improving all the time and can affect an area 4 square centimetres in surface area. This is enough however to target certain brain areas and that's all you really need for a range of impressive effects. Which of course we're about to look at here... The Applications of TDCS for Cognitive Enhancement The effects that TDCS can have on your brain have been shown to be impressive. In one study by a scientist called Cohen for instance TDCS was used to improve the learning of precise hand movements (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 20, p2016... if you'd like a little light reading). More impressively though, studies using various methods of brain stimulation have demonstrated how running a current through our memory areas, it is possible to make all of our memories 'light up' in detail so that we vividly relive things we'd long forgotten. Of course the applications of this are sprawling, but we're now definitely into the territory of something like limitless. And just one more to whet your appetite – by suppressing the language centres of the brain (remember this is all just temporary) it's possible to increase our mathematical performance, focus, attention to detail, logic skills and recall. In other words this is most likely very close to becoming an autistic savant – imagine being able to sit down and become an autistic savant while you did your work – unable to become distracted, obsessively keen to finish and with access to far better maths and memory skills. It's very close to being a reality and I would suggest that the technology to achieve this is already out there – it's just a matter of time waiting for it to be packaged and marketed. Other Technologies While this is all very exciting, the fact that you can only select areas 4 centimetres in area is still something of a drawback. Luckily though there are many other exciting technologies on the horizon that promise to put an end to this. Such as for instance some research is looking into using ultrasounds to stimulate areas by knocking open the ion channels that are responsible for triggering the electrical firing. While this is very early on in the research stages, it should be able to affect areas as precise as 1-3 cubic millimetres. Meanwhile transcranial magnetic stimulation has been demonstrated as an effective way to inhibit certain brain areas and this is already being used to treat depression in hospitals – and a US firm called Neuralieve is developing a handheld device that can be used to treat headaches. So although we're a little way off, it can't be long until people are re-purposing these things for cognitive enhancement. I dare someone to do it in their garage. Perhaps that last bit was not entirely moral... The biomatrix cannot be held responsible if you burn your eyes out.  Copyright 2012 The Biomatrix.Net

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