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Electric 'Thinking Cap' Controls Learning Speed
An anonymous reader writes "Vanderbilt researchers say they've shown it's possible to selectively manipulate our ability to learn by applying a mild electrical current to the brain. Using an elastic headband that secured two electrodes conducted by saline-soaked sponges to the cheek and the crown of the head, the researchers applied 20 minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to each subject. Depending on the direction of the current, subjects either learned more quickly, slower, or in the case of a sham current, with no change at all. The [paywalled] study appears in the current issue of the Journal of Neuroscience."
People are going to be lining up around the blockfor the "learn slower" electric charge.. if our society's obsession with alcohol is any indication.
...cause when we execute people by electrocution, they certainly do learn their lesson!
Sigh. We need people to become more eager to _buy_ stuff, not to learn faster!
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I wonder if this could be used to treat conditions like chronic fatigue. Those of us suffering from it are just about ready to attach electrodes and a 1.5V battery to our heads.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
... will it work with my Lightning connector? ... will it drain my battery?
Not that this is even remotely related to what you're talking about. I don't if I'd even describe what you're suggesting as "rapidly approaching" We barely understand the very rudimentary aspects of the brain, much less how "Thought" gets made. But I do concede that should we survive long enough as as a society then yes, something like this will come along and someone bad will use it for bad things. So what do you propose we do? Make it illegal? That wont stop North Korea from doing anything. Ban research? That might delay it but again, the bad people always find a way. Best we learn as much about it and use it for good so that when it gets used for bad we can recognize and understand whats happening quicker and possible had a fix developed already.
There was no indication that this device can determine *what* was learned, much less that false information can be implanted. It just helps or hinders people in the speed with which they learn. Your comment is just tinfoil hat ranting, which I don't recommend you wear when they strap you in and put one of these things on your head. Do you have a source for anything that even potentially matches your dire warning?
Mod parent up! Hilarious! And crazy!
But just imagine the dangers if they can somehow transmit these signals over the air and somehow get them to be transmitted directly to the brain through the visual system.
It could paralyze a whole nation into giving up their civil liberties!!
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Crap, my tinfoil hat is still conductive! What am I going to do now?
This seems analogous to grabbing a smartphone, connecting a wire to some metal part, plugging that wire directly into a 120 V AC source, and hoping that the smartphone works better afterwards. Yes, smartphones have electricity running through them, too, but what you're doing isn't like to be productive.
We're only going to be able to safely operate on the brain when we can stably reprogram individual neural networks. That's the model we're going to have to have of the brain. Something on the order of sophistication of microchip and circuit designers with a cadre of millions of neuroprogrammers. Brain programming might one day be the growth field. We can't have opinions of how the brain might work. We need to have facts about how the brain does work, in minute detail.
I disagree. The inventors of the trebuchet had no idea about the Higgs, the inventors of the windmill didn't understand Bernoulli's work, and the first people to take Valerian root had no concept of biochemistry. We can use observed patterns to serve our needs without understanding the reasons for those patterns. Yes a lot of people died eating random plants, but there are a lot of us, and we learn quickly. My favorite part about engineering is using techniques to solve problems that no one understands yet. Its like magic. The best is when a true subject matter expert tells me "that shouldn't work!" and yet it does. Science always catches up and we are the better for it, but that is no reason to proceed with caution when we have so many people, and so much to learn. I would qualify this by saying test subjects should be informed and consenting.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
i dunno...3d print it with polymers?
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Faraday cage exo-skeleton of course. You don't really believe the japs when they say all that research is to take care of their aging pop. right?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
The Singularity is just another type of slippery slope argument. Some foolish "experts" draw an exponential curve and say it intersects with infinity in ~50 years. Everyone who studies reality knows that as the speed of anything increases so does the resistance. That's why if you drop something out of an airplane it doesn't accelerate to infinite speed, and neither does technological progression.
I think you mean social, not physical reality. Aristarchus of Samos's heliocentric theory was more "real" than the epicyclists; yet he had trouble getting anyone to accept it, because the social reality of the time was so fixated on geocentrism.
In the same way, Mendel's ideas correlated with reality, but the social reality of his time prevented him from getting stuff done.
Wegener is another example.
I think you're guilty of naive realism, which fails when it comes to quantum physics, for example.
But even this child's play get results. Lots of low hanging fruit.
When somebody can attach a headband on you against your will, you are already enslaved.
So, the Electric 'Thinking Cap' "study appears in the current issue".
I am shocked.
No brain, no pain.
I don't think the Singularity means what you think it means. It isn't intersecting with infinity, but with human intelligence. It is not claimed that human intelligence is infinite.
If as the speed of anything increases, so does the resistance, why are galaxies speeding away from each other at an ever-increasing rate?
The best part is that a tinfoil hat would work against this sort of stimulation (if you manage to keep the hat).
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
(...)to say Ray Kurtzweil is just some "foolish expert" is to be utterly clueless (...) he probably did more before breakfast this morning then you will achieve in your entire life.
You mean, like having some nice morning sex? Given the Slashdot famed population statistics, you might be just right.
The task in the study that the subjects had to learn is one specifically tailored to make use of the brain area stimulated. Whether this can help in, for example, memorizing the contents of a book remains to be seen.
Wow, connie, it seems like all you're really saying is that you believe in the singularity, which, unfortunately, we all already knew. Yes, Moore's law is no more a law than Occam's razor. Moore's law is just a principal that works until it doesn't.
I see a car outside my window right now driving on the highway at 65mph. So I'm coining the term "Ablaze's law" right now that says that that car will just keep driving at 65mph forever. Ablaze's law will probably work for quite a while, certainly long enough for me to confirm it's validity. Does that mean it will continue to work as soon as conditions change in such a way as to make it absurd? Absolutely not.
If the road ends a mile up and I predict that the car will just keep going, well.. what it doesn't prove is that the nature of the car is going to change to fit my law. What it does prove is that my law doesn't apply to that situation.
In other words: The singularity is proof that the model doesn't accurately predict reality at some point in the future. It is not proof that reality is going to reconfigure itself to fit the model, no matter how much you happen to like the guy who came up with it.
The Greeks must have said about the same to Aristarchus of Samos in the third century BC. There was no evidence of parallax motion of the stars, therefore the earth didn't move around the sun. But their instruments just weren't sensitive enough to detect the parallax.
And of course it was wildly implausible that the earth was not the center of the universe. So even though Aristarchus was right, he was dismissed and science was set back some two millenia. That's the risk you run by being so dismissive. Instead, the Greeks could have spent energy trying to develop more sensitive instruments, than in refining their fundamentally incorrect epicyclic model.
If as the speed of anything increases, so does the resistance, why are galaxies speeding away from each other at an ever-increasing rate?
Technically they aren't. Technically they are getting further apart without moving away from each other at all (if you average momentum). But I expect you just threw that in there as a red herring, since even if galaxies were moving away from each other it does nothing to refute my claim that at some point in the future they would encounter a resistive force and stop accelerating at such a rate.
Ray Kurtzweil is a very smart man. He is also a very sad man who thinks would be a good and practical idea to have a computer imitate his dead father. He's actually quite a pathetic -- in the sense of moving one to pity -- figure, unable to come to terms with basic truths about existence.
We're already soaking in the Vingean singularity: anyone with a smartphone and a data connection has effective Intelligence Amplification. That doesn't revoke the laws of physics or take us to utopia any more that the previous singularities that humanity has experienced (the development of speech and of writing).
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Exponential progress is simply put an idiotic theory that fails at so many levels _even_ for the tour de force of technology: that of computers in general and silicon based microchips in particular. Waving ones hand and uttering the "SINGULARITY" mantra doesn't change scientific fact sadly.
The laws of physics are statistical. Why can't we learn to exploit the statistics?
So that's all you're doing, making unsubstantiated claims.
i never said I believe in The Singularity and obviously know that Moore's Law is a misnomer...it's more like a prediction that has so far been quite accurate.
i did say, however, that I believe Ray Kurtzweil is a genius, and knows more about engineering and technology then probably the entire userbase of slashdot combined. a quick look at his long list of serious technical achievements proves this beyond a reasonable doubt, altho i'm sure there are people here who are fantastical engineers. this is fact.
i also said that the rate of change in the Technium is non-linear, which makes it very very easy to underestimate where technology is going. this is fact.
i believe that brain skullcap manipulation is an engineering problem that will one day be solved...not in the name of enslaving humanity but to benefit it, and that an unfortunate unintended consequence will be that someone somewhere in future time and place will use the technology for nefarious purposes...this is conjecture based upon my reading of history.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Woah, rein your horses my man! Having a smartphone doesn't make anyone more intelligent, quite the contrary indeed, if I'm to believe what I see everyday in the street, public transports, restaurants, social events etc. The ability to find more information faster may provide Knowledge Amplification, but it has nothing to do with the Intelligence of the person that carries the smartphone. I'd say the smartphone is more intelligent, if anything is to be.
When somebody can attach a headband on you against your will, you are already enslaved.
Paying for it is a problem too. That's why we had design the Occulus -- so nerds would pay us to put that headband on.
Your argument can apply equally well to both sides of this debate. By pushing equally hard in both directions it has a net zero effect, and thus can be completely ignored.
Give special attention to the electrodes. A pair of quarters was not a good idea.
Now that is a good idea.
It would be nice to try out with an alternative 2.4 GHz electric field.
The point is, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. And plausibility relies on social reality, not what's really going on.
But even this child's play get results. Lots of low hanging fruit
I couldn't believe my eyes when I read TFA (not the paywalled one).
Before we get any understanding of the function of our brain they already are messing it up with currents.
What kind of consequences are we willing to risk ? I mean, no matter how mild the electric current turn out to be, at the cell level (neuron level) that current is still a SHOCK to them.
How much stress must we put the neurons under ? What would happen to the neurons after repeat electric shock treatments ????
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I think you mean that you really want the sponge to be wet when they put the tinfoil hat on you while strapping you in. You really don't want to see what happens when the sponge is dry:)
This electronic thinking cap seems like it will be slightly more pleasant than someone having "a little mental handicap radio in his ear" which emits "some sharp noise to keep people... from taking unfair advantage of their brains."
For those that wish for the singularity, sadly there's a 50-50 chance of it slipping into a dystopian singularity of forced equality or a professional sports analogy to "The Dark Fields". These possibilities appear to be nearly upon us and we don't even seem realize it... The spirit of Diana must be smiling... Maybe we should attempt to keep such eventualities at bay for a while by take those things out of our ears, oh wait, maybe that's too late for that ;^)
Helmholtz coil in a hat is what you really want when said and done and all the regions are better understood. .. setting A, polarity Y .. setting B, AC [cycle-time, intensity, loc_data, ...] ...
Want to learn a new physical skill
About to drive in hazard conditions
Hope the cancers and what not hold off till after puberty.