Personality affects maths-enhancing brain-zap method | New Scientist

Posted on December 10, 2014 by John

They found that participants with high maths anxiety made correct responses more quickly and, after the test, showed lower levels of cortisol, an indicator of stress. On the other hand, individuals with low maths anxiety performed worse after tDCS.
“It is hard to believe that all people would benefit similarly [from] brain stimulation,” says Cohen Kadosh. He says that further research could shed light on how to optimise the technology and help to discover who is most likely to benefit from stimulation.

via Personality affects maths-enhancing brain-zap method – life – 09 December 2014 – New Scientist.
Link to full paper: Cognitive Enhancement or Cognitive Cost: Trait-Specific Outcomes of Brain Stimulation in the Case of Mathematics Anxiety

Taming the black dog—new approaches to depression – All In The Mind – (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Posted on December 9, 2014 by John

Or download audio:
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2014/12/aim_20141207.mp3

Lynne Malcolm: Colleen Loo says that this transcranial direct current stimulation treatment is best used for people with clinical depression who haven’t responded to other treatments. There are very few, if any, side-effects and some participants have even noticed benefits beyond changing their moods.

Colleen Loo: Yes, and this was very exciting. So when we did our first depression trial we were measuring things like memory and thinking…you know, it was just to be safe, to check these things. And one of the things we measured was we asked people to do a test which really showed you how quickly the brain was working. And as people went through the trial they were saying things like, ‘Gee, I don’t know what kind of stimulation I’m having, but it’s almost like my brain clears and I can concentrate and think so much more clearly after the stimulation.’

So we were very excited when we got the end of the study and we formally analysed the results of the formal test, that it showed exactly what people were saying to us, that after the act of stimulation the actual thinking speed was faster, and that has led our team to develop a whole parallel line of research of using TDCS to improve memory and thinking. So our main line of research is in treating depression, but I also have a very promising young researcher who is a clinical neuropsychologist, Dr Donel Martin, who is heading a whole program of research into using this to improve memory and thinking. For example, in people who are older and who are just starting to notice some changes in their memory and thinking.

via Taming the black dog—new approaches to depression – All In The Mind – ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

A mood-changing headset, Thync, that uses electrodes to perk you up | The Guardian

Posted on December 9, 2014 by John

Also, if you live in the Boston area, Thync is recruiting for alpha-testing. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AlphaRecruitment

Alcohol and coffee are about to get competition from a set of electrodes you wear on your head. Branded the Thync, the calming effect it produces is comparable to how you feel after an alcoholic drink, while the energising effect is similar to a cup of coffee, says Isy Goldwasser, the CEO and co-founder of this Silicon Valley-based startup. The company plans to start selling the device through its website in 2015.
Goldwasser envisages people using the Thync “vibes” to help them unwind after a long day at work, or to get a caffeine-free pick-me-up. “We are giving people a way to overcome a basic limitation – that no one is really wired to co-opt energy and calm on demand,” he says.
It doesn’t work for everyone though. About a third of people don’t have a strong response. When I try a prototype I feel a tingling where it makes contact with my skin, but no particularly serene feeling, even after a few sessions. The energising vibe also fails to do much for me.

via A mood-changing headset, Thync, that uses electrodes to perk you up | Technology | The Guardian.

CDPH Warns Consumers Not to Use TDCS Home Device Kit (June 2013)

Posted on November 26, 2014 by John

I wonder what factors led to this… Because the company was incorporated in California? Was there a complaint? News story catch the eye of someone at the DCPH? Have other manufacturers seen this and as a result done things differently? From June of 2013.

TDCS Device Kit, Inc. of Petaluma, Calif., is voluntarily recalling the TDCS Home Device Kits because the product has not been federally approved to market in the United States, and has not been determined to be safe and effective for their intended use. During a recent inspection, CDPH determined that the devices had not been manufactured in compliance with good manufacturing practices for medical devices. Also, the devices were found to be labeled without adequate directions for use and without adequate warnings against uses that may be dangerous to health.

Use of the device could pose a health risk including, but not limited to: epileptic seizures, cardiac arrhythmias, cardiac arrest, optic and otic nerve injuries, skin irritation, headaches, blurred vision, and dizziness. No illnesses or injuries have been reported at this time.

via CDPH Warns Consumers Not to Use TDCS Home Device Kit.

DIY devices jolt brain, improve function – The Columbia Chronicle

Posted on November 17, 2014 by John

Wood said he uses tDCS while playing improvisational jazz piano and the stimulation helps to increase his overall focus while playing.

“The first time I tried it, I immediately noticed an effect,” Wood said. “You get a light that blinks in the corner of your eyes, [which is] just the exciting of the optical nerves, and I also felt a metallic feeling in the back of my mouth.”

via DIY devices jolt brain, improve function – The Columbia Chronicle: Health & Tech.

Wearable for state-of-mind shift set for 2015 | Phys.org

Posted on November 12, 2014 by John

Their (Thync) technology is about proprietary neurosignaling waveforms that target neural pathways via a triad: BRAIN: prefrontal and frontoparietal brain regions; NERVES: sensory fibers of cranial nerves; and MUSCLE: neuromuscular fibers, according to their site. Fundamentally, this is, in the words of CNN’s Heather Kelly, “a portable headset that will offer three settings to start: energy, relaxation and focus.” Isy Goldwasser, the company CEO, said in CNN, “For some people it would be their third cup of coffee, for some people it would be their afternoon nap.” Cofounder and CSO Jamie Tyler, a professor at Arizona State University, said in MIT Technology Review that the device can produce “a calming effect more potent than drinking a couple of beers or taking Benadryl. “As for the energizing effect, Bullis said the “short-lived” energizing effect “feels a little like drinking a can of Red Bull.”

via Wearable for state-of-mind shift set for 2015.

BBC News – Unexpected ways to wake up your brain

Posted on October 31, 2014 by John

The final thing I wanted to test was electric shocks. Is it safe to shock your brain? For some years scientists have been using tDCS (transcranial direct current stimulation, a small electrical charge to the skull) to try to improve a whole range of things, from learning to reaction times.

Dr Charlotte Stagg of Oxford University, has been using it to help people recover strength in their hands after a stroke. Charlotte has found that, compared with a sham treatment, tDCS seems to speed up recovery, probably because of the effect that tiny electric currents have on neuronal connections inside the brain.

To see what effect it would have on me, Dr Stagg carefully positioned some electrodes on my skull and turned on the machine.

There was a slight itchiness and it did feel as if my brain had been given a jolt, but had it actually made any difference?

The short answer is yes. In a test which involved pressing a button when I saw a light go on, my reaction times improved from an average of 650 milliseconds before the machine was turned on, to 550 milliseconds with it on. These findings are in line with results from other subjects.

via BBC News – Unexpected ways to wake up your brain.

At-home brain stimulation gaining followers | Science News

Posted on October 31, 2014 by John

Depending on where he puts the electrodes, Whitmore says, he has expanded his memory, improved his math skills and solved previously intractable problems. The 22-year-old, a researcher in a National Institute on Aging neuroscience lab in Baltimore, writes computer programs in his spare time. When he attaches an electrode to a spot on his forehead, his brain goes into a “flow state,” he says, where tricky coding solutions appear effortlessly. “It’s like the computer is programming itself.”
Whitmore no longer asks a friend to keep him company while he plugs in, but he is far from alone. The movement to use electricity to change the brain, while still relatively fringe, appears to be growing, as evidenced by a steady increase in active participants in an online brain-hacking message board that Whitmore moderates. This do-it-yourself community, some of whom make their own devices, includes people who want to get better test scores or crush the competition in video games as well as people struggling with depression and chronic pain, Whitmore says.

via At-home brain stimulation gaining followers | Science News.

YOUR ELECTRIC PHARMACY

Posted on October 23, 2014 by John

Emphasis mine on “but over time it will also gradually rewire your neurons to prevent future attacks.” Very interesting considering the source, Marom Bickson. If you’ve been following the pop press on brain plasticity, you’ve certainly heard the phrase: “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” Could this be a meta-framework for thinking about tDCS?

Head band and controller sourced from CaputronMedical.com the green electrode/strap on the right is the Soterix EasyStrap (see below)

Future medications for brain disorders could be delivered through electrodes rather than pills
By Marom Bikson and Peter Toshev

The pharmacist guides you to a shelf of headgear, labeled
with different brain regions. She fits you for a cap, the underside of which features thin conductive metal strips, called electrodes, coated in adhesive gel to stick gently to your scalp.
The electrodes link to a slim cable that dangles from the back of the cap. She then hands over the key component of your prescribed medication: an electric stimulator.
Once a day for the next week you will don the headgear
and plug the cable into this device for a 20-minute dose of
electricity. Setting aside your trepidation, you give it a try in front of the pharmacist. At first you feel only a tingling sensation and then relief.
As you wear the cap, an electric current is traveling from
the electrodes, past hair, scalp and bone, into the brain regions responsible for your migraines. At first it merely blunts the pain, but over time it will also gradually rewire your neurons to prevent future attacks. The pharmacist explains that you will be free to carry on with your day—finish chores, watch television, go for a walk– with the cap on your head, and when the dose is up, the stimulator will simply stop running.
——–
When brain cells activate together, the connections among them grow stronger and more numerous. Cells that seldom fire in concert gradually lose their linkages. Adding tDCS can therefore heighten the brain’s ability to rewire itself—its plasticity.

Source: http://neuralengr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/samind_2014_11.pdf
See also: Zap Your Brain to Health with an Electrode Cap – Scientific American.
And: Giving the Brain a Buzz: The Ultimate in Self-Help or a Dangerous Distraction?

Soterix Accessories page. (I am not affiliated with Soterix or any other product mentioned on this blog).

The Subtle Shock: Fine – Tuning What You Hear | Carolina Alumni Review

Posted on October 9, 2014 by John

One unusually well-designed study, he said, was from the University of Lyon in France, in which 30 people with schizophrenia reported that after TDCS, they heard voices about 30 percent less than before. The researchers followed up with the patients, and the treatment was still working, even after three months.

Frohlich decided that the schizophrenia study was so potentially life-changing for patients that it had to be replicated — and improved upon — as quickly as possible. According to the National Institutes of Health, about 1 percent of Americans have schizophrenia; many of them are too sick to work or even talk lucidly with their doctors about treatment. Antipsychotic medication helps some, but it has serious side effects. A 2013 study estimated that the costs of schizophrenia — from treatment to caregiving and unemployment — are about $4 billion a year in the U.S.

via Carolina Alumni Review – September/October 2014 – carolinalumnireview20140910-1410495196000bc357d2b34-pp.pdf.

My Thoughts On Thync

Posted on October 9, 2014 by John

When I started this blog in 2012 friends and family thought I was crazy. But I knew something interesting was happening and now that we’re seeing all this VC money flowing into the space it’s obvious something IS happening. Still too early to tell what will become of all this, but a single ‘killer app’ (provable, repeatable, without side-effects) could launch tDCS, or another form of non-invasive brain stimulation, into the mainstream.
I wonder if Thync’s announcement took Halo Neuroscience by surprise (probably not). Considering how simple a tDCS device is to make, it will be interesting to see if add-ons can make individual devices truly patentable – I’m thinking built-in feedback and monitoring etc.
And this on Thync’s About page from Marom Bikson! This is interesting in itself because Dr. Bikson has been critical of efforts to commercialize tDCS in the consumer space (especially the foc.us device, but generally cautious)

“Dr. Jamie Tyler has built an extraordinary team of scientists and engineers at Thync who are creating consumer devices that achieve a level of neuromodulation performance, safety, and ease-of-use that is a categorical advance for the field.”

Looking into the list of scientific publications Thync lists on their site, I would have to conclude that perhaps their focus is more on transcranial pulsed ultrasound (TPU) than tDCS. And look! DARPA has also been funding research in TPU. [Update: Thync confirmed their first device will be tDCS based.]

Thync ‏@thync
@DIYtDCS Thank you for the inquiry. We have deep knowledge of both. Our first product will be around #tDCS.

Here, from Thync’s website, they lay out the technological foundation of their ‘Vibes’ product.

Founded on decades of research and results using transcranial pulsed ultrasound (tPU), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and other transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) methods, Thync elevates these breakthroughs in neuroscience to a new place in lifestyle technology.

We have developed proprietary neurosignaling waveforms that target neural pathways via a mechanistic triad:
• BRAIN: prefrontal and frontoparietal brain regions
• NERVES: sensory fibers of cranial nerves
• MUSCLE: neuromuscular fibers

And…

A secure Bluetooth Low Energy network enables users to control and tune neurosignaling waveforms to optimize their experience while shifting mindset in a personalized manner.

Aha! From a Business Week article tweeted by Marom Bikson, (implying their device, at least initially is more likely to be tDCS based):

Thync pursued Tyler’s ultrasound techniques for the first year, until the founders learned about studies conducted at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, where researchers had tried to improve pilots’ cognitive abilities with electrical stimulation. Reasoning that the electrical method, with its rapidly improving science, offered a safer, quicker route to the market, Thync switched gears. Since then, the company has worked to shrink the electrodes and develop its algorithms to produce a reliable, comfortable experience.

For the past 18 months, Thync has tested its “vibes” on more than 2,000 people in clinical trials at its Boston office and the City College of New York. Some subjects didn’t respond to the treatment at all—it doesn’t work for everybody—but the company reached a milestone when two out of three respondents started to regularly say the sensations were more powerful than the placebo effect. “Most people rate it as a moderate to strong response,” Goldwasser says of the energy vibe, “or at least as good as a few cups of coffee.”

Prof. Bikson is co-director of Neural Engineering at The City College of New York so it stands to reason he was involved in the testing. When I asked him via Twitter he said:

Marom Bikson ‏@MaromBikson
DIYtDCS CCNY completed 90 subject 6-week (5 session per week) trial using Thync and Soterix tech. Exciting details and results coming soon.

Excited to see the results of these tests. Also, as long as we are heading into the consumer space, it’s great to have Dr. Bikson involved.
The product is set to launch in 2015. I’ll be following closely…

Update 10/12/14 Following up on Mika’s observation (see comments)…

DIY tDCS ‏@DIYtDCS Oct 10
@thync Can you tell me how Thync is related to NeuroTrek? Chicken, egg, etc… #tDCS

Thync ‏@thync

@DIYtDCS Neurotrek was our initial company name before becoming Thync. However, we have no relation to any Neurotrek CES products.

P.S. Thync hit it out of the park with the naming of their company/domain/Twitter handle.

tDCS + Meditation — tDCS and Neurodynamics —A Modern Monk

Posted on October 5, 2014 by John

The first type of meditation I practice is the standard “focus” meditation that is taught on headspace.com, and there are great walk-throughs there. I use tDCS to calm the conscious mind by placing the cathode on FpZ the center of the forehead and the anode at OZ center of the back of the head. I do this montage for 5–10 minutes, then remove the electrodes and meditate, focusing on my breath, for 10–15 minutes. I usually do this in the morning, and afterwards, I usually place the anode at FpZ and cathode on upper left arm and run the current for another 5–10 minutes. I find this is helpful in getting into work mode.

via tDCS + Meditation — tDCS and Neurodynamics — Medium.

I want to be your neuroscience experiment | Al Jazeera America

Posted on September 27, 2014 by John

My sense is that the author’s experience is very similar to that of most tDCS DIYers – an initial flurry of interest followed by frustration at not knowing if ‘it’s working’. That’s why it’s exciting to see easily replicated protocols for self-testing emerging around the Dual N-Back game that is available for free. http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/download.html

A device mentioned in the article is J.D. Leadam’s ‘Brain Stimulator’ http://thebrainstimulator.net (No affiliation)

We’d decided to try the “accelerated learning” montage that had been developed and tested by DARPA. The best test of the device we could come up with was to play Nintendo Wii Mario Kart while brain zapping for 20 minutes — our performance seemed easily measurable (we would just play the same course, over and over) and a lot less violent. At first I was miserable, my green dinosaur avatar, Yoshi, falling off the track on every hairpin turn and barely finishing the course in 3:30. By the end, though, I was cracking 3:00. Of course, there was no control here, no way to tell whether I was simply learning a new skill, but I was cautiously optimistic.

In the weeks that followed, I stuck to it, undertaking 20 minutes of tDCS four to five days a week. I decided to try to teach myself interactive web design, and whenever I’d run the current through my brain, I’d accompany it with 20 minutes on Code Academy, the teach-yourself-to-code megasite. But after a few weeks, the results I was looking for seemed elusive. I was obviously getting better at coding, but there was no way for me to know what role the electricity was playing. And it was still kind of painful. So I quit, and about two months after visiting Bikson’s lab, my tDCS device is gathering dust on a shelf in my office.

via I want to be your neuroscience experiment | Al Jazeera America.

Contributor Q&A: Cara Santa Maria gets her brain stimulated | Al Jazeera America