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Do-It-Yourself Brain Stimulation Has Scientists Worried
Freshly Exhumed writes "Dave Siever always fancied himself as something of a musician, but also realized he did not necessarily sing or play in perfect key. Then he strapped on the electrodes of a device made by his Edmonton company, and zapped his brain's auditory cortex with a mild dose of electricity. The result, he claims, was a dramatic improvement in his ability to hear pitch, including the sour notes he produced himself. 'Now I tune everything and I practise my singing over and over and over again, because I'm more sensitive to it.' Mr. Siever was not under the supervision of a doctor or psychologist, and nor is he one himself. He is part of an extraordinary trend that has amateur enthusiasts excited, and some scientists deeply nervous: do-it-yourself brain stimulation." With studies suggesting that small doses of electricity can: increase your memory, help you learn new tasks, make you better at math, turn you into a sniper in minutes, and most importantly make the ugly seem attractive, we can expect a lot of brain zapping in the next few years.
experience an orgasm?
-Luis Wu
An increase in vegetables in the next few years as well.
Doesn't look like it.
This is great so long as everything is published as they go. Waveforms, Impulse frequency or duration, Pulse train frequency, electrode placements, signal voltage and current. Don't let this get taken over by the industrialists. :)
Also, publish your data BEFORE you use the signal. If you die, we need to know what did it.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Where can I get one??
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
zapped his brain's auditory cortex with a mild dose of electricity. The result, he claims, was a dramatic improvement in his ability to hear pitch, including the sour notes he produced himself.
How the hell would he know if it didn't? Can we get testimonials of his friends? Otherwise, I'm claiming placebo effect.
Click here to find out how this 47-year-old local patriot discovered one "weird" old trick to stimulate the brain and end slavery to Obama's mind control.
Here is the company referenced in the article.
About $200 - $300, depending on the product and functionality. And best of all - it's completely [medical device] unregulated!
I worked for a company the built medical diagnostic (EEG & ECG) and treatment (TENS) equipment. We had a few prototype stimulation units that one salesman had the bright idea of connecting up to his brain. It's output was really limited (on the order of a few micro amps) using electrodes attached to his ear-lobes. Turn it on with a low frequency sine wave (1 - 2 Hz) and watch the fun. It was interesting to watch his eyes scan back and forth like a Cylon. The sign wave was super-imposed on the normal impulses, so he could still direct his eyes, but really funny if he was trying to keep his eyes focused on one thing.
I have no doubt that he was doing damage along the way (but hell, he was only a salesman). He claimed that it made him feel high. The stupid bastard was even driving his car with the thing hooked up.
However, you can have all manor of fun with a good TENS unit.
Wow.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
Because you get to choose whether or not you're a member of the party.
I'm not responsible for the actions of other white men, unless I permit their behavior, but I am partially responsible for the behavior of any group I join.
As for discriminating against the GOP, they're main reason for existing is to discriminate against anybody that isn't in their shrinking clique. Sexual minorities, Muslims, the poor, children et al., are groups that they regularly act to marginalize.
And they really work, too. I have one. When I tore my rotator cuff in college, I had a choice of surgery and maybe getting back 85% of my movement back, or trying a muscle stimulator, or TENS machine. I used it on the torn shoulder set well below the pain threshold for a few weeks and then started slowly working it up. After a few months I was already past 85% movement and still improving. Now, an unmentionable number of years later, I'm playing racketball again with 100% range of motion. For six hundred dollars. And no pain.
;)
That being said, no amount of money would get me to stick it anywhere near my head. Shudder. The machine I got is capable of making your muscles rip themselves apart. If you overestimate when you increase the power, you effectively taze yourself. The only good thing is you know there's a rest period in a few seconds so you can stop it. It hurts. A LOT. I know.
I always wondered how stupid a person would have to be to think that one side of the government loves them more than the other.
Can you please post your IQ?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I had my brain connected once to a pulse generator via a surface grid of electrodes. (This was before epilepsy surgery at Stanford, and most of the grid was on the right occipital cortex.) During this procedure they would send an increasing series of pulses of 5, 10, 20 mA etc. down to each grid position and ask if I saw anything after each one.
About 80% of the electrodes were actually kind of boring. They would produce a characteristic speckling somewhere in the leftward field of view at a certain radius and angle. Other electrodes made very weird stuff appear. One caused everything on the left side of the room to suddenly look extremely brightly hued. It looked like a grocery aisle with cheap fruit drinks. The colors got more intense with additional current.
There was a problem near the end with a bunch of uncomfortable hallucinations. Every tiny little point from the pulse generator had this upsetting weird look to it, like a kitten with its head crushed. They somehow weren't going away, and I started bitching about something seeming to accumulate in my field of vision.
They told me at this point that my brain wasn't correctly grounded to the bed frame. I wasn't able to ground it myself since all I could reach on the bed was plastic. As soon as they regrounded it, for a split second I saw some sort of bright thunderbolt approach from the left and sweep all the stuff away. It felt like a relief somehow but I'm not sure WTF I was seeing.
The GOP is an opt in grouping of individuals based upon having similar views. These views include disbelief in climate change and skepticism science in general[...]
Citation needed - their platform is here, and contains none of the things you claim it contains:
http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_home/
No, I'm not a Republican, I'm just sick of seeing shit slung at political groups without supporting evidence.
These views include disbelief in climate change
News to me.
skepticism science in general
Do tell!
Really, please do keep telling me what I believe. Here I thought I just had socially and fiscally conservative leanings; who knows what else you can tell me about my views!
"Which part of the brain do you need to zap to" ...
...make you think it's a really good idea to zap vague areas of your brain with electricity based on the hilariously incomplete field of neuroscience?
Several answers:
* The part that makes someone an experimental neuroscientist of the type which are currently conducting this research?
* The part that allow Marie Curie to kill herself with radiation poisoning before it was known radiation was dangerous?
* The part that caused Thomas Edison to do shotgun testing of materials for a lightbulb filament?
* The part that caused Johnny Knoxville to make the Jackass series?
* The part that caused Geoffrey Robson to kill himself while working to improve wingsuits?
* The part that caused Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger B. Chaffee to allow themselves to be bolted into Apollo 1?
* The part that caused Vijay Pande to believe crowd-sourcing science was a good idea?
* etc.
Pick your part.
Don't forget their irrational loathing of homosexuality.
But the GOP fear of homosexuals is demonstrably NOT irrational. If homosexuals had their way, no GOP would ever get elected.
Somehow this is being translated into "GOP hates children", which is laughable.
At least until they're born. After that, fuck 'em, they're on their own, right?