Dr. Weisend also uses the title: Biasing the competitive, winner-take-all networks in the brain to optimize performance with non-invasive brains stimulation. From 2014. Don’t know how this got by me. Thanks to Redditor delicieuxpamplemouss for the find.
Interesting especially in relation to Michael Weisend’s success using F10 in skill (target recognition) acquisition. That the research is going in this direction is encouraging. I expect we’ll have a much better understanding of various cognitive enhancement strategies over the next few years.
We compared effects of 30 min prefrontal and parietal stimulation to right and left hemispheres on subtask performance during the first 45 min of training. The strongest effects both overall and for ship flying control and velocity subtasks were seen with a right parietal C4, reference to left shoulder montage, shown by modeling to induce an electric field that includes nodes in both dorsal and ventral attention networks. This is consistent with the re-orienting hypothesis that the ventral attention network is activated along with the dorsal attention network if a new, task-relevant event occurs while visuospatial attention is focused Corbetta et al., 2008. No effects were seen with anodes over sites that stimulated only dorsal C3 or only ventral F10 attention networks. The speed subtask update memory for symbols benefited from an F9 anode over left prefrontal cortex. These results argue for development of tDCS as a training aid in real world settings where multi-tasking is critical.
Michael Weisend PHD. is a principal investigator at The Mind Research Network, MRN.org, and assistant professor of Translational Neuroscience at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Dr. Weisend and his team pioneered a method for determining optimal brain regions for tDCS stimulation using fMRI. Much of Dr. Weisend’s work is focused on cognitive enhancement in healthy subjects for the purpose of reducing the amount of time it takes to master a skill. He shared a full hour of his time and a wealth of tDCS-related information. Download the interview here (zipped mp3). Subscribe in iTunes. (Firefox users- there’s an issue with the html5 audio player. In the meantime you can download the episode or open the page in another browser).
Show Notes
The Sally Adee article I discuss. (pdf)
The Through The Wormhole episode mentioned. (YouTube)
Magnetoencephalography
DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
DARWARS Ambush NK is a research program intended to accelerate the development and deployment of military training systems. (wiki) (pdf)
TDCS guided using fMRI significantly accelerates learning to identify concealed objects.
eeg electrodes + gel + wrap.
Transcranial direct current stimulation’s effect on novice versus experienced learning.
iNTIFIC Develops games and training.
pulsed oscillatory electromagnetic fields
tRNS
Fisher Wallace Stimulator.
Perils of tDCS.
F10-anodal, cathodal-opposite upper arm, actually does something.
‘Target search and identification’. What could it be good for the average person?
Dear reader, help me find a way to build a self-experiment that will test my results.
Recalling distant memories?
Anecdotes…
Girl who heard melodies.
Guy who solved a problem he’d been working on.
Age-related memory decline… ‘I can find words now…’
-More verbally fluent as a result of tDCS
-Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus (approx F5-anode, cathode opposite upper arm)
“People do not like it.” Cathodal stimulation of F10
Accelerating non-declarative skill learning.
-Cathode-L-DLPFC, Anode-M1
Grants outstanding to test more of this.
Recruiting the correct brain network to deal with the stimuli at hand for the purpose of successful task completion.
Competing brain networks!
Neural modulation fastest growing area of medicine.
Ethics of tDCS.
Lisa Marshall
Potential for-profit applications?
Conferences: Human Brain Mapping, Seattle June 16-20
Society for Neuroscience San Diego Nov 9-13
Vincent Clark is an author on this paper. He’s associated with the Mind Research Network. We earlier covered work by Michael Weisend, also from MRN around a Jan. 2012 paper. This paper offers further details and is available to the public.
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Procedures
TDCS was applied using an ActivaDose II Iontophoresis Delivery Unit, which provides for delivery of a constant low level of direct current. Square-shaped (11 cm2) saline-soaked (0.9% sodium saline solution) sponge electrodes were attached to the participant with self-adhesive bandage strips. The anode was placed near electrode site F10 in the 10-10 EEG system, over the right sphenoid bone. The cathode was placed on the contralateral (left) upper arm. The site of the anode was selected based on our previous fMRI results showing that this brain region was the primary locus of neural activity associated with performance this task [23].
Anodal 2 mA current was applied to the scalp electrode site F10 in the 10-10 EEG system. The resulting enhancement of performance in the threat detection task is consistent with our previous fMRI results [23] showing that the right inferior frontal cortex is a major locus of a distributed brain network that mediates performance on this task. The right parietal cortex is a part of this network and could also be a target for stimulation.
—————————–
One possible explanation for the improvement in detection performance (hit rate) in the threat detection task is that tDCS increases general arousal, thereby leading to a change in response bias in the more liberal direction [25], which would increase the hit rate. However, computation of signal detection metrics showed that there were no significant effects of tDCS on the ß measure of response bias. Instead, the effect of brain stimulation was to enhance perceptual sensitivity, d′.The improvement in perceptual sensitivity suggests that participants receiving tDCS were better able to encode stimulus features that distinguished targets and non-targets, which in turn led to accelerated learning and improved retention.