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Boosting Your Brain With Batteries
Bifurcati writes "Running a tiny current acrosss your head increases your verbal skills reports Nature News. 103 nervous volunteers received 2 thousandths of an amp and showed a 20% improval in a simple verbal test, compared to a control group (same setup, just no current in the wires). Somebody better buy the politicians a couple of car batteries..."
first battery enhanced post!
I should imagine running an electric current accross ones brain would certainly increase verbosity, though coherency might take a back seat to a drooling babble.
Were these tests performed under double-blind conditions? How was it determined that the effect was from the application of a current rather than the idea? The article doesn't say.
I cannot wait to overclock my brain.
Canthros
I think GW Bush needs more than a battery... How about an electric chair?
Due to lack of disk space this user has been discontinued
What happens when you up the voltage on your CPU? That bathtub curve becomes a lot shorter in timespan.
Hope the same doesn't happen with your brain.
You know you've been IMing too long when you almost say 'lol' out loud to a non-geeky friend...
and all I got was this lousy erection that won't go away!
Easy guys, I put my pants on one leg at a time. The difference is after I put on my pants I make gold records!
*Somebody* needs a battery up side of the head!
And now we know what Bush had strapped to his back during the debates.
Oops, just noticed that they did. Still, it seems that the current required to get this effect is quite noticeable, so there could certainly be a psychological component.
Anyway she reports a 20% increase. Hmm, if I get my math right that mean they got 24 words in 90 seconds?
Now it all depends on how the results were calculated. It obviously had some kind of effect if EVERYONE who had the current did 20% better then those who didn't. But this is never the case. Not everyone without the current would have gotten 20. Some would have gotten 16, some 24. Same with the current applied.
The study is far to small and inprecise. We are only talking a few words more. Because the subjects who received the current knew it (they reported an icchy feeling) the test is not really blind as these test need to be. That might have inspired them to do better.
If the same can be done with more complex language tests then it could prove that something is happening here other then the placebo effect.
Anyway I am the kind of person who always gets electric/static shocks from everything, by this logic I should be a language genius. I am not.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you are interviewing a suspect, it is now LEGAL to threaten them with electric shocks in order to get them to talk.
We found that by applying electricity liberally across thier temples and genitals gave us a 100% increase in talkativeness and convictions.
If they loose control of thier bodily functions, it is best to stop, or lower the voltage.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
You need more even brain coverage by the current. Perhaps by using a tinfoil hat as one of the electrodes. Other posts have mentioned where to stick the other electrode, so I won't go into that.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
In 2007 caps with build in heatsink and fans will be all the rage, real geeks will go around with thermal paste on thier close shaved (or bald) scalps.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
now all I have to do is plug a battery on my tinfoil hat, and I'll have 20% more brainpower to fight the aliens!
Professor Hathaway: "Up the voltage"
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Not really. For one thing, static shocks probably wouldn't go through your brain (unless you have the habit of ramming your head against metal objects). And even if it did, it would only mean that you should be smarter with language than if you had never received those shocks -- it says nothing about how smart you would be relative to the general population. The study also doesn't say anything about long-term effects of the shocks -- the shocks might only increase your verbal ability for a short period of time -- or about what happens when you continuously shock yourself -- if you shock yourself too much, it could have a negative effect, instead of an increasingly positive effect.
(And as proof that SmallFurryCreature is not a language genius, I present exhibit A: use of the incorrect "to" in the first sentence of the 4th paragraph, and exhibit B: misspelling of "itchy"... ;-) )
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.
How many people die of brain failure? I would think that death by natural causes is predominantly other organs failing / terminal diseases.
Photos.
It's been interesting to watch the debate on electric fields and the effect on biologic systems.
There's some evidence that shows there's an association with cancer and some evidence that shows that it's perfectly safe. Long time cell phone users appear to be at risk for benign tumors. Now this study shows there's a possibly beneficial effect.
Personally, the idea that there's any effect at all makes me somewhat nervous. I spend eight hours a day a couple feet away from EMF generators, as do most of the Slashdot crowd. Knowing that my computers might be tweaking my neurons or altering my DNA, however slightly, doesn't exactly fill me with glee.
There was an article about this in Scientific American a year or two ago. It was in the same one where they talked about idiot savants, or it may have been in the Hidden Mind special. I don't remember,so back to 'paying attention' in chem.
int main(){ char ln[0]; ln[15]=(ln[14]=(ln[13]=(ln[12]=(ln[11]=(ln[10]=((l n[0]=((ln[1]=((ln[2]=((l
Is that just an ironic mistake, or some sort of karma easter egg in the post?
"They're givin' me 10,000 watts a day you know, and I'm hot to trot. The next woman that takes me out is gonna light up like a pinball machine, and pay off in silver dollars. " (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest)
Apparently the poster has not tried this method. There's no such word as "improval". How about "improvement"?
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
This is NOT a safe technique to apply in combination with a tinfoil hat. That's what THEY want you to think.
All the while if you really apply current to your hat they will use specially crafted rays to go through that current to your brain, or the higher tech greys can even wirelessly ride in via the magnetic field which will now surround the hat when current is applied.
I'm warning you, don't do it or YOU could end up being the next president or some other puppetlike official!
But the research on the water-cooled tinfoil-hat hasn't caught up yet. What are we supposed to do in the mean-time?
=)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
People don't just slip into a coma. They get hit with a hard object or get some weird disease or something. I'm only asking about brain damage with regard to increasing the current flowin through.
Photos.
I need more details! It says in the article that they applied the current for 20 minutes prior to the test and she speculated that cells could fire off more easily after the current had gone by. How did they think *during*???
Will it be alright to pulse this through my head for a millisecond every second? Doesn't that sound like it would give you a longer, more continuous effect? I mean, I've got a AA battery sitting here in front of me that's good for 2010mAh. If I ran a constant 2mA through my head I could do that for 1005 hours off of this thing. If I pulsed it though at a millisecond every second I could be getting 1005000 hours out! Granted, the battery will likely run out of juice all on it's own in that time, but doesn't this sound exciting?!!
I imagine that in 5 years or so we'll see some wire with a small battery attached to it that we can run along the surface of our scalp under our hair. In 6 years the SAT's will include metal detectors.
Direct away from face when opening.
Lets = Let's
To = too
Inprecise = Imprecise
Icchy = itchy
Hmm...
Anyway I am the kind of person who always gets electric/static shocks from everything
That explains a lot!
Exhibit C: Incorrect use of the word "then" in the second sentence.
Exhibit D: All Small Furry Creatures encountered thus far have been linguistically challenged. Including the one strolling around my legs right now in an 8-form.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
... it would have the same effect that current "pop" music has on teenagers?
Zey set ze blut is ze life, but no, not blut, electreecity! Eh leck TREE city! Eegor, throw ze svitch!
Yeth marthter.
BWAM! Fzzzt. Zk fzzsnk bzz
Eeet leeves. Leeeeeves! Hahahahahaha eee hehehehe. LEEEVES!
Modern science, eh? They should have just hired the guys at Hammer Horror. Been doing this sort of stuff for years, now.
If the effect is psychological, having a physically detectable (by the subject) component is likely to reinforce it.
Hmm, so maybe to increase my verbal skills I should rub poison ivy on my skalp replicate the ichy sensation.
Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org
Either there numbers or their analogies are wrong. 2 thousanths of an amp (aka 2 milliamps) is a significant, though harmless amount of current to pump across your scalp. This is also several orders of magnatude larger than the current required to run a DIGITAL WATCH. Wrist watches run with only a few uA (microamps) or current. Pull 2mA out of a watch battery, and it will be dead in a day.
Here's how they got results.
(**ZAP**)
"Owww. Sorry, I'll do better, I promise, stop zapping me"
(**ZAP**)
"Sorry, sorry, I'll go faster"
(**ZAP**)
Previous tests tried several thousand volts, and had the opposite impact on verbal skills, with most saying either "gnnnnh!" or nothing at all. On the other hand, the effect was permanent.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Now we know what the Bulge in George Bush's Jacket was!!!
Could you be more specific re: Exhibit C? I ask because the only usage I saw was "than", and it was used correctly.
What is an 8-form?
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
...if you use your brain you generate a potential across it. Maybe one day we could feed people interesting sights and sounds and use the energy generated to power entire cities. I know, let's call this idea...mmmm...I know...The Matrix.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
An 8-form is a rotated lemniscate.
Exhibit C refers to the second sentence by the GRANDparent, counting from my original post. It says "Harder then you may think...", since my post was meant as a continuation from the parent poster.
:)
Your second point is valid though. I was talking about my cat, but it should be "figure eight" or "figure of eight" in English. I think my native language is showing through... Consider me arrested, supreme officer!
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Which hemisphere gets the positive?
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Aha! Grandparent! I am illuminated!
I, speaking practically no languages other than English, am not prone to correct errors which are clearly due to a non-native-English-speaker's unfamiliarity with English idiom - especially American idiom. I mostly wondered what you meant with the 8 thing.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
who would've thought that all those back issues would come in handy as anything other than a tool to show people how much smarter than them i am.
int main(){ char ln[0]; ln[15]=(ln[14]=(ln[13]=(ln[12]=(ln[11]=(ln[10]=((l n[0]=((ln[1]=((ln[2]=((l
It was not clear. Was the improvement between two distinct groups with and without charge. Or did the study test everyone both ways (in a double blind manner or as double blind as an electical shock can be) and they witnessed a 20% improvement after before and after shocking?
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
I want to see some AAA powered diagrams and try this at home. It is the frontal lobe, beneath a full 3/4 " of hardened calcium (in some, harder than others). We should be able to empirically test this by finding spelling errors in subsequent posts.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
You're not a statistical genius either. If 103 people get an average 20 words for each person in 90 seconds on the first round, that is a total of 2060 words for all of them. If you then apply current and test them and they get 2472 words, some individuals may have gotten 16, while others may have had 32, and the average increase over the sample was 20 percent. And with 103 people, that's a large enough sampling to show a real effect.
Of course, that could mean that they all just did better the second time. That's why the author of the paper split them into two groups, a zapped group and a control group. With 50 people, you're still working with a large enough sample to get useful averages as indicators, though not proof. And what did she discover? The zapped group did twenty percent better than the control group. If the control group showed NO improvement, they'd have 1000 words total, and the zapped group would have 1200 words.
Placebo effect is rather far-fetched here. Yes, the zapped people did feel an itchy feeling, but both groups had electrodes and believed they'd be zapped. The real zappees performed much much better than their counterparts.
What bothers me most about your post is that you're ripping her study apart because it's not absolute proof. Of course it isn't. It's a study. All science is looking at indicators, trends, probabilities, hypotheses... and it's totally counter-productive to wait until you've proven it outright. What you should be saying is, "Hmm... that's really interesting that she reported such a large improvement, and her results definitely indicate something curious going on. Perhaps this deserves a closer look."
If you're going to attack studies and reports, people, make sure you have the credentials and expertise to do so. Usually if somebody is publishing in or being reported on by Nature, they've got their ducks in a row, and your 2-minute armchair critique is going to fall hopelessly flat. Ask questions, offer insights, but criticism comes best from peers, which most of us are not.
This may be modifying the normal working of the neurons which are subject to stochastic resonance.
By increasing the base line of "noise" they allow nerve firings to happen with greater ease?
(A parallel might be drawn here with futile cycling in biochemical systems, but I'm unsure how much of the brain's normal interactions are enzymatic as opposed to electrical)
PLUS wouldn't running a current through the metal help block some of thoes pesky mind-controlling signals?
Double benifit!!!!
That bit about 2 ma being less than it takes to power a digital watch was good. LCD watches are in the microampere range: the guy was off by a couple orders of magnitude. You try drawing two mils from a button cell and see how long it lasts.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I think theres a good chance the itchy sensation they experienced was from the conductant jelly used on the electrodes they attached.
The jelly has a lot of salt in it, drys the skin if not treated with moisturizer after use.