As someone who runs a think tank that operates online, I think a lot about the category of thinking itself. What is it, for example, that allows some people to be more creative and problem-solving than others, and what is it that allows some people to have near-infallible memory to the point of having wise tendencies? The human mind is amazing, and yet what if we could enhance this biological wonder and give the human brain more energy, energy that it doesn’t have to create from within? What if we could boost it slightly, without overheating it? Okay, let’s talk about this for a moment, because I’m not the only one asking this question.
It turns out that there are many people working on this problem, for a variety of reasons, for example, to increase the acceptance of learning, memorization and increase the speed of training. In fact, there was an interesting article on the MIT Mim Blog titled; “DIY Kit Speeds Up Your Brain With Direct Current: Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Works And You Can Try It At Home” Posted by Christopher Mims on March 8, 2012, which caught me off guard. The article said;
“DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. The long-term effects of tDCS are unknown, and if you mess up and put orders of magnitude more current through your brain than is normally used in tDCS, you could obviously kill yourself.”
Still scared, well I am and I definitely hear what Chris is saying here, and GoFlow’s neuroscientist admitted to safety concerns, but there are also upsides. GoFlow, the company that creates this device stated; “Air Force researchers were recently delighted to learn that they could cut [the time required to train drone pilots] in half by delivering a mild electrical current (two milliamps of direct current for 30 minutes) to the pilots’ brains during training sessions on video simulators. There is also evidence that CSDD can induce the state of creative nirvana known as flow.”
Okay, you mentioned security concerns, and I agree with the skeptical issues and security concerns, so it’s wise for you to address this as you go along. I see unlimited applications. And I bet someday battery-powered devices like this maybe in football helmets in the NFL, racing helmets in NASCAR, strike driver helmets, as well as being worn by writers, thinkers , scientists and even politicians while debating below their hairline or pointing at them with a direct energy beam source.
Still, I wonder how many of us would actually be willing to try it without knowing the long-term effects. We know that increased microwave frequencies from cell phones can cause brain damage, but at low doses there appears to be a positive effect on cognitive function. Correct, I noticed that I use the words; “it seems to be”, and yet this line of research is intriguing and deserves our attention. Actually, that’s all for now, but surely I hope you will consider all this and think about it.
