Author Archives: John

Patent US20140257448 – Head Worn Brain Stimulation Device and Method – Google Patents

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Just because I ran across it today looking for something else. I started my blog in 2012. A device of this nature was obvious to me then. The patent was filed in 2013 and granted in December of 2014.  Do you see anything novel in this device? Will the trolls now come calling whenever a head-mounted stimulation device gains any traction in the consumer market? I’m naive when it comes to patents but this looks overly broad and obvious. Considering  other previous patents listed in the application I wonder how this one could have been awarded.

Head Worn Brain Stimulation Device and Method
US 20140257448 A1
Abstract

A self-contained portable head worn device and methods to stimulate a portion of the brain of a wearer are presented. A first electrode is held by the head worn device against the scalp of the wearer in a first location and a second electrode is held against the scalp of the wearer in a second location. A pulse generator generates a first electric signal received by the first electrode and a second electric signal received by the second electrode. A power source is connected to the pulse generator.

patentUS20140257448A1-20140911-D00000

via Patent US20140257448 – Head Worn Brain Stimulation Device and Method – Google Patents.

Wearable functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) and tDCS: Expanding Vistas for Neurocognitive Augmentation | Frontiers

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A new generation of functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) systems is described that are miniaturized, portable, and include wearable sensors. These developments provide an opportunity to couple fNIRS with tDCS, consistent with a neuroergonomics approach for joint neuroimaging and neurostimulation investigations of cognition in complex tasks and in naturalistic conditions. The effects of tDCS on complex task performance and the use of fNIRS for monitoring cognitive workload during task performance are described. Also explained is how fNIRS + tDCS can be used simultaneously for assessing spatial working memory.

via Frontiers | Wearable functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) and transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS): Expanding Vistas for Neurocognitive Augmentation | Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience.

Frontiers | Open questions on the mechanisms of neuromodulation with applied and endogenous electric fields

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via @MaromBikson Download links below.

Despite increased knowledge, and more sophisticated experimental and modeling approaches, fundamental questions remain about how electricity can interact with ongoing brain function in information processing or as a medical intervention. Specifically, what biophysical and network mechanisms allow for weak electric fields to strongly influence neuronal activity and function? How can strong and weak fields induce meaningful changes in CNS function? How do abnormal endogenous electric fields contribute to pathophysiology? Topics included in the review range from the role of field effects in cortical oscillations, transcranial electrical stimulation, deep brain stimulation, modeling of field effects, and the role of field effects in neurological diseases such as epilepsy, hemifacial spasm, trigeminal neuralgia, and multiple sclerosis.

via Frontiers | Open questions on the mechanisms of neuromodulation with applied and endogenous electric fields.

Modulating Cognition Using tDCS of the Cerebellum

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There’s a 12 minute video at the original article link below. Including demonstrations of the montage (around 8 minute mark) used in the research.

The procedure demonstrates how performance (accuracy, verbal response latency and variability) could be selectively improved after cathodal stimulation, but only during tasks that the participants rated as difficult, and not easy. Performance was unchanged by anodal or sham stimulation. These findings demonstrate a role for the cerebellum in cognition, whereby activity in the left prefrontal cortex is likely dis-inhibited by cathodal tDCS over the right cerebellar cortex. Transcranial brain stimulation is growing in popularity in various labs and clinics. However, the after-effects of tDCS are inconsistent between individuals and not always polarity-specific, and may even be task- or load-specific, all of which requires further study. Future efforts might also be guided towards neuro-enhancement in cerebellar patients presenting with cognitive impairment once a better understanding of brain stimulation mechanisms has emerged.

via Modulating Cognition Using Transcranial Direct Current … | Protocol.

Could This ‘Thinking Cap’ Help You Learn? |LiveScience

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In our work, we study how short-term memory and long-term memory work together. We use laboratory tasks that ask people to look for a certain object. This task is like looking for your lost keys in your house. We have people look for a specific object in array after array of objects. As you would expect, people get better as this task each time they do it. What our measures of brain activity allow us to do is see how short-term memory and long-term memory simultaneously contribute to the performance of this task. What our studies have been showing is that both of those types of memory storage contribute to how we process information at the same time. Our more recent experiments have looked at how brain stimulation improves task performance and accelerates learning. What our simultaneous measurements of brain activity show is that long-term memory appears to be the source of this accelerated learning, even though it is unfolding across just a matter of seconds to minutes.

via Could This ‘Thinking Cap’ Help You Learn?.
See Also: Electric Brain Booster (Do Not Try This at Home) (Gallery)

How the brain ignores distractions | News from Brown

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As our awareness of brainwave activity mapped to behavior evolves, we’re sure to see the development of tACS for treatment and enhancement. I am betting that Neurolectrics, with their lab-level NIB/EEG device, Starstim, have been collecting valuable data in this area.

Jones and Kerr are now working with Dr. Ben Greenberg, professor of psychiatry and human behavior, to test whether they can use noninvasive, transcranial alternating current electrical stimulation (tACS) to take advantage of this process. They will test whether they can use the technology to manipulate alpha and beta waves between parts of the brain such as the somatosensory cortex and the rIFC to suppress attention to, or even the detection of, pain.

In a similar vein, research results show that mindfulness meditation, also possibly via the mechanism of throttling attention via control of alpha rhythms, can help people ignore depressive thoughts. Jones and Kerr are also interested to study whether explicit manipulation of alpha and beta waves between a different part of the cortex and the rIFC could provide much the same relief.

The Brown Institute for Brain Science recently outfitted a new lab on campus with the needed hardware for tACS and other brain stimulation research. BIBS and the Norman Prince Neurosciences Institute are funding the collaboration with Greenberg.

via How the brain ignores distractions | News from Brown.

The effects of theta transcranial alternating current stimulation – PubMed

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Especially in light of the recent Aldis Sipolins study which found no transfer (improvement to fluid intelligence) with his tDCS/exercise protocol, I think it’s smart to keep our eye on tACS. Although far less researched, I’ve noticed consistent reports of positive effects. Google the article title and you can find a few links to full pdfs.

The results showed that active theta tACS affected spectral power in theta and alpha frequency bands. In addition, active theta tACS improved performance on tests of fluid intelligence. This influence was more pronounced in the group of participants that received stimulation to the left parietal area than in the group of participants that received stimulation to the left frontal area. Left parietal tACS increased performance on the difficult test items of both tests (RAPM and PF&C) whereas left frontal tACS increased performance only on the easy test items of one test (RAPM). The observed behavioral tACS influences were also accompanied by changes in neuroelectric activity. The behavioral and neuroelectric data tentatively support the P-FIT neurobiological model of intelligence.

via The effects of theta transcranial alternating current stimulation (… – PubMed – NCBI.

Second blow to the head for effects of brain zapping – New Scientist

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Zap goes the effect
The team pooled the results of more than 400 studies that reported a change in cognitive skills following a session of tDCS.
“Most studies have more than one outcome measure, such as accuracy, speed, errors made and so on,” explains Horvath. And while one study may show, for example, improved accuracy on a memory task after tDCS but no effect on speed or errors, another memory study may show improved speed, with no effect on accuracy or errors. When put together they cancel each other out. This pattern played out in studies of memory, processing speed and mathematical ability, Horvath found.
Roi Cohen Kadosh, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford who has studied the effects of tDCS on mental arithmetic, is far from convinced by this argument. “My feeling is that it is very premature to do what they did,” he says. “They did have a large sample size, but they fractured it so that they are comparing the results of three or four studies and expecting to see something meaningful. It’s the easiest thing in science to not find results,” he says.

via Second blow to the head for effects of brain zapping – health – 29 January 2015 – New Scientist.

Brain Hackers Beware: Scientist Says tDCS Has No Effect – IEEE Spectrum

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Jared Horvath, a neuroscientist at the University of Melbourne, in Australia, looked at every study of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) that reported an impact on cognitive and behavioral activities such as problem solving, learning, mental arithmetic, vision tasks, and memory games. He then excluded results that had not been replicated by other researchers, as well as any experiments lacking a “sham condition” control group—where participants were connected to the device but didn’t receive current. While many of the more than 200 individual studies that remained claimed to have found significant effects, those effects disappeared after Horvath’s number crunching. “When I pulled out the 20 studies looking at tDCS and working memory, for example, they all found something, but they all found something different,” says Horvath.

One study may have found an effect on accuracy, another on reaction time, and a third on response confidence. “But when I brought them together, they just canceled each other out, and I was left with nothing,” he says. It was a similar story for more than 100 other cognitive and behavioral outcomes. “It looks like the evidence says tDCS is not doing anything.”

via Brain Hackers Beware: Scientist Says tDCS Has No Effect – IEEE Spectrum.

Signal to Noise — A Summary Of NYC NeuroModulation 2015

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Second, there’s an emerging picture of how different forms of electric brain stimulation like tDCS, tACS, and tRNS work. An emerging consensus among both mechanistic and clinical researchers seems to be that the major effect of tDCS (and to a lesser extent tRNS) is to boost plasticity in stimulated regions while tACS exhibits weak to nonexistent effects on plasticity but provides a means to interact with ongoing brain rhythms. Secondly, there’s increasing acknowledgement that even when the spatial current spread is restricted; stimulation induces very significant “network effects” through feed-forwward and feedback connections between brain regions; these effects (as well as individual variability) might explain why observing consistent physiological effects of tDCS is difficult. Finally, an increasingly popular area of interest seems to be combining tDCS with some kind of cognitive training or exercise, based on the hypothesis that tDCS-induced plasticity enhancement will be synergistic with these regiments.

via: http://quicktotheratcave.tumblr.com/post/108707511968/a-summary-of-nyc-neuromodulation-2015

Our Sleep Problem and What to Do About It | Newsweek

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Meanwhile, the military is going straight to the brain in search of wakefulness: It is researching a process called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which more or less zaps the brain with electricity, in the hope that it will keep soldiers constantly at the ready. Andy McKinley, an in-house researcher for the U.S. Air Force, helped publish a study on the phenomenon. “When we kept people up for 30 hours, we found that tDCS improved their vigilance performance twice as much as caffeine, and the effect lasted twice as long. Caffeine lasted two hours, tDCS lasted about six.” For the sleep-unhappy public, unregulated and unapproved tDCS-applying devices have already found their way onto civilian markets.

via Our Sleep Problem and What to Do About It.

You Asked, We Answered: Thync Frequently Asked Questions

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Q: How are Thync Vibes tested?

A: Thync Vibes are the culmination of testing and developing of our technology on thousands of people in more than 150 studies we have conducted. When evaluating our Vibes, we monitor biometric signals, psychophysiological variables, and conduct psychometric evaluations. For example, we capture, record, and analyze data such as heart rate, heart rate variability, galvanic skin response, pupil diameter, and EEG to quantify how Vibes influence both the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system.

Our studies also consider the placebo effect by incorporating sham groups in blind tests to assess the effectiveness of a particular stimulus protocols. We use sham protocols that mimic the skin sensations of Vibes and give users the same control interface in our app, but they are designed to be non-functional in increasing energy or enhancing calmness. Our standards for developing reliable and significant Vibe effects are always defined by comparison to sham studies.

Q: Does the Thync device produce long-term changes in brain function or neuroplasticity?

A: Thync scientists have investigated long-term effects with both in-house and sponsored academic research studies and have not identified any maladaptive long-term effects.

Q: Are you planning to add additional Vibes?

A: We are planning to expand our Vibes in the future. Stay tuned.

via You Asked, We Answered: Thync Frequently Asked Questions.

Electrical Stimulation ‘Tunes’ Visual Attention Using Long-Term Memory | Lab Manager

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“These new findings provide evidence that long-term memory representations can also underlie our ability to rapidly configure attention to focus on certain objects, and that long-term memory performance can be sharply accelerated using electrical stimulation.”

Researchers have long known that attention could be tuned, like a radio dial, to hone in on specific features, but how and where in the brain this tuning occurs has remained an open question.

By passing very weak electrical current through the brains of healthy volunteers using a process called transcranial direct-current stimulation, researchers were able to cause the volunteers to much more quickly find target objects embedded in arrays of distracting objects. The study showed that after 20 minutes of passing safe levels of weak electrical current through electrodes placed on the head, the volunteers were able to more effectively focus attention on the searched-for targets, with dramatic increases in speed.

via Electrical Stimulation ‘Tunes’ Visual Attention Using Long-Term Memory | Lab Manager.