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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.
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?
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.
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.
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