Is DIY Brainhacking Safe?

An anonymous reader writes "My colleague at IEEE Spectrum, Eliza Strickland, looked at the home transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) movement. People looking to boost creativity, or cure depression, are attaching electrodes to their heads using either DIT equipment or rigs from vendors like Foc.us. Advocates believe experimenting with the tech is safe, but a neuroscientist worries about removing the tech from lab safeguards..."

Comments

Predictions?

[Anonymous Coward]

How long until the first Darwin Award is given to someone attempting this?

Re:Predictions?

[pitchpipe]

I'm thinking not long. Although tempting, I don't want to be the guinea pig.

I learned how to fix and improve computers through tinkering (which I would consider a form of hacking). What usually would happen is I would try to upgrade something, break my computer, and then spend the next four hours trying to fix it. The problem here is that you would be breaking the 'fixer' with no time to google how to roll back the buggy changes.

Re:Predictions?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Edison's Medicine

Georgia Power cocktail

Don't taze me, bro'!

Re:Predictions?

[Darinbob]

You're using hexadecimal I hope.

Re: Predictions?

[JayJay.br]

My IQ goes up to eleven.

Re:Predictions?

[flyneye]

Like you ever knew what you were getting anyway. Usually, it would be some analog, if not the original.
The DEA does bust some. Never get them all. Thinkfully, there is still an underground evident in subculture. Burning man, various Dead-headish music tours, most universities and San Francisco.
Here is an interesting film about people I crossed paths with back in the day, their adventures, their bust, and whats left over. Totally fitting for /., this was pure Geek debauchery. I think we can agree that as long as chemistry majors want to alter their brains, there will be hallucinogenics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... This was like a Hunter S. Thompson wet dream when it was happening.
Frankly, anyone DOING it, becomes a researcher. It has been that way for thousands of years, I doubt, in the scheme of things, that the DEA will ever make a difference. I dont think theres anything but propaganda evidence that they make ANY difference.

Go ahead

[msobkow]

Go ahead. Fry your brain. It's not like you're using it or anything. :(

Re:Go ahead

[hey!]

I think it would be very hard to fry your brain with a 9v battery, even if you couple it to your head with saline soaked sponges. It'd sting, but it's doubtful you'd be able to endure enough to do serious damage. If you want to exercise an abundance of caution, you could put a 2ma or 5ma fast blow fuse in series with the electrode (yes, they make them that small).

More to the point is *subtle* changes in your brain because you hooked the electrodes up wrong, or overstimulated your brain with long sessions without medical supervision. You could commit a fatal error if you are treating yourself for depression and you connect the device in a way that makes the depression worse.

One thing that's worth noting is tha most if not all the claimed benefits of tDCS can be achieved through exercise. That's worth considering as an alternative brain hacking scheme.

Betteridge's law of headlines

[SuperBanana]

No.

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )

Of course

[Kardos]

I did it last week. Setting up the electrodes was the easy part. The hard part was setting up the electrodes!

the internet circa 1995

[globaljustin]

I wouldn't take that chance with something as elementally "me" as my mind.

right? me neither...

problem is, there are tons of people willing to line up to do this...**tons**...and they will all surely blog about it in hopes of getting picked up by mainstream news publications

with this "brain mod" crap I'm getting a bad feeling...

remember back in the early days of the 'web'...say 1995 when AOL was king...we all knew that there was so much more that could be done with the internet but even then, the question was **are we willing to sacrifice privacy**

same with cell phones

i remember when the internet was new, everyone was skeptical of it & **assumed** what they did on the internet was not private...

then the commercialization effort started in earnest and before long every desk job required internet usage...

what I'm getting at is ***I feel that same feeling now***

SKEPTICAL...it's not what its made out to be...and if we ever *do* get hyper-selective brain stimulation I can only envision all the ways the tech could be misused

Re:the internet circa 1995

[khallow]

I can only envision all the ways the tech could be misused

Don't worry. There'll be a fix for that.

Trepanation

[The Grim Reefer]

"The most prominent folk theory for the benefits of self-trepanation is offered by Bart Huges, alternatively spelled Bart Hughes and sometimes called "Dr. Bart Hughes", although he is not a doctor but rather a librarian by trade. He was better known for his advocacy of drug use and trepanation and in 1965 he drilled a hole in his own head with a Black and Decker power drill as a publicity stunt. Hughes claims that trepanation increases "brain blood volume" and thereby enhances cerebral metabolism in a manner similar to cerebral vasodilators such as ginkgo biloba. No published results have supported these claims."

I knew someone who wrote many letters and emails to Black and Decker back in the 1990's requesting a recommendation for which drill bit to use for self-trepanation. It was an amusing joke. He got dozens of panicky replies and was contacted by their lawyers who informed him that they did not support him using their power tools for medical procedures. He finally did receive a reply from someone with a sense of humor though. I kept a copy of that email chain for years.. I wish I still had it, or knew where it was.

Re:Stupid

[canadiannomad]

Yeah, well a business that call's itself "foc us" and sells a few dollars(cents?) worth of "simple circuits, and a couple of electrodes" to couch bums for $250 is definitely just out to "relieve some people out of their money."

Re: Drugs are probably safer

[WilyCoder]

The generally accepted usage regimen of MDMA is once every three months. That indicates that MDMA is highly disruptive to the normal functioning of the brain. There would be more quantitative studies of MDMA if the stupid government would allow it. But one can look at heavy users of MDMA for a good gut-feeling estimate of the toxicity of MDMA. Other drugs such as LSD and psilocybin are not suspected of being neurotoxic like MDMA possibly is...

Re:Stupid

[Darinbob]

With a name like foc.us it's gotta be good. With all the money they saved by not hiring someone to find out if it sounds funny when spoken aloud they added extra safeguards.

Back up

[TheWingThing]

Better back up your firmware, just in case this makes you infirm.

Re:Stupid

[khallow]

I'd use the phrase "more likely" based on a thermodynamics argument. My take is that states where the brain functions better are far fewer than states where it works worse. So any modification of brain function is more likely to slide into a poorer state rather than a better one.

Re:Stupid

[El Puerco Loco]

So what, it can take your brain from New York to like, Texas or Alabama?

"My brain? But that's my second favorite organ!"

[DutchUncle]

- Woody Allen, "Sleeper"

too close to electroschock therapy

[peter303]

I remember depictions of George Nash in the Beautiful Mind movie. He never did great math after that.