Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus
newscientist.com
newscientist.com
Statements like "warns me that if I remove an electrode and break the connection, the voltage passing through my brain will blind me for a good few seconds." which may be a misreporting, don't help to bolster credibility. It may indeed blind you due to some neurophysiological effect, but breaking the connection of a direct current circuit will simply stop the current (unless there is a huge inductor in the circuit somewhere, in which case there will be a spark to your scalp as the SAME current tries to keep flowing).
Could be, could be what the fella actually said - if someone did say that to me I'd be less inclined to allow them apply electrodes to me... and that's the professional.
The amateurs (as linked from the article) are burning themselves...
From http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=7943
"it actually burnt though the skin and left bruise marks. i hope it's gonna go after few days coz i look really silly"
Yeah, I think I'll give it a miss, thanks.
Examples: maybe this will make you likelier to have a brain seizure when you are just 60 years old, maybe after prolonged use one region of your brain is more active making you behave differently (could be positive or negative), maybe it will make you more susceptible to Parkinson, Alzheimer, etc...
That being said, if everyone was as coward as I am, we would have missed on lots of inventions.
Where are the startups? Where are the hobbyist groups?
If you email me, I will let you know what its like.
This device will measure heart-beat variability too.
Maybe the tech has gotten better, but I wouldn't hold your breath for anything that costs $100.
No surprise there, the muscles of the head will have a stronger signal than the brain, if you're using electrodes outside the skull.
There might be some way of filtering those out, perhaps using additional electrodes directly on the relevant muscles. Subtract the signal on those electrodes from the signal on the other electrodes.
The ground, again from what I can tell from the photo, is on the earlobe. This is not a terrible place for a ground (there are no muscles there) but it's not ideal for removing EMG artifacts.
In Mesa, AZ: https://www.google.com/calendar/event?eid=bHB1ZXIyNXBpaHFpM2...
Our hackerspace, Heatsync Labs, does "Augmenting Humanity" on Monday nights. I believe one of the guys there is building a TMS device right now.
Also this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUW7dQ92yDU
And this video on how to use it: http://www.jove.com/video/2744/electrode-positioning-and-mon...
jim.jones1@gmail.com http://www.github.com/aantix
This type of device may need FDA approval which would require the setup of clinical trials, etc. So that would be a significant barrier to entry for startups.
> "He died in exile: as with all men, it was his lot to live in bad times."
Even if it didn't directly improve focus it seems like it would be a great placebo. Nine volt batteries are probably commonly perceived as being powerful. They are used in stun guns, for example. You also experience unusual side effects after it's applied, further removing any doubt that something unique is happening to you.
I'm sure they controlled for that, as it is stupendously obvious and common to control for, and easy to do - just don't turn on the battery, or measure the effects of the current direction reversed (damages performance according to the other article).
Does this even make sense physically? I mean, wouldn't the skull work a bit like a Faraday cage, not allowing any currents into the brain?
I am highly sceptic of this new hype.
I'm not a doctor, but as far as I understand, the human body is highly conductive -- and there are a number of "wires" and conductive fluids running into and out of the brain. The entire nervous system is, in a very rough sense, electrochemical circuitry.
But it is true. I don't know what the current paths are - but to activate neurons very tiny current densities are needed, so probably even though the bulk of the current flows along the skin, the little that leaks into the brain is probably what is cause whatever effects are seen.
Bone is quite resistive, and would be quite transparent to electricity.
Second, blood (salts/water) makes for a nice conductor.
A Faraday cage is impervious to electromagnetic waves. It is not impervious to an electrical current. Or rather, if you apply two electrodes with a voltage difference on the Faraday cage, you will get a current flowing between the two electrodes (for a perfect Faraday cage, with a resistance of zero, and a perfect voltage supply, the current would be infinite!). Someone inside the Faraday cage equipped with a multimeter would be able to see this current, which in a real-world Faraday cage will flow along the shortest path between the two electrodes.
If you vary that current over time, you will induce electromagnetic waves on the inside of the Faraday cage - indeed you have just turned your Faraday cage into an antenna. This is pretty much what was being done in the New Scientist article...
If I wanted to increase my productivity, I would start by not surfing hackernews. Eventually, I might move on to "home made electric chair I bought off ebay", but I think I will exhaust other possibilities first.
But, hey, that's me. :-)
The book talks about how interactions between people/things/events work. The author talks about how we can feel more connected based on vulnerability, proximity, flow, similarity, and environment.
The part on flow discussed how a champion racecar driver gets "in the zone" or "flow". As someone who's done programming competitions in the past (in a room where others are writing code against you) I could absolutely relate, time outside just washes out of sight, the curly braces become an extension of you, it's a down-right magical feeling.
There's another concept I feel is related to this, and I don't want to jump the shark here but, if you think about how we reach mastery of things we know (or, in other words, you can read sheet music, but can't play the guitar like a pro because every few notes you make a small pause and think about the next few notes), we're focusing on our impulses, or rather, eliminating them. This TED video does a much more fun/elegant explanation of impulses: http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passio...
I find it interesting that when I'm personally in a state of "flow", I'm working without any "impulses". To me it appears like the two are related: you need to be able to work without impulses in any given skill before you can enter flow (otherwise, you break out of flow). Now, this isn't enough, and I feel this is where we get back into the "connections" or "relationships" discussed in Click. To me it appears we as programmers have a better predisposition simply because the computer can create for us a synthetic reality free of normal distractions, we can tweak our proximity to a machine should we need to (mod your PC case and feel proud, love your mac book, set up your desktop just the way you like it), we know how vulnerable it can be to different things (viruses, long running programs, leaky memory), we experience it enough that it's very familiar and similar to things we've experienced before (try switching editors or color themes for a day, you'll understand how your similarity impacts your ability to get into flow), we can control almost all of the environment. In this synthetic universe we are better predisposed to making all the mental connections we need to feel like we're using an extension of ourselves rather than a machine.
This goes back to what we've long known: programmers need to know their stuff in and out, and need to work in an environment they have control over.
1) Familiarity. You must be doing something at which you are competent.
2) Stress. You must have a moderate challenge. Imagine Notch building his nth dungeon game, and this time he's trying to do it in ten minutes less than his previous best time.
3) No distress. Distress comes from too great a challenge, such that it pulls you out of your flow state (what you call impulses, I believe). Imagine making Notch do his development in C# on .Net, since he's a Java guru (he may well be a .Net guru, too, but let's assume he's a noob for the sake of this example).
Another example of something which causes distress and an inability to reach a flow state would be tackling an integration using a new API which has a non-intuitive interface and lousy documentation.
To build on your example of changing editors or color schemes, I think this explains why we developers are so sensitive about working on other people's code base. It's not simply that it's ugly, or not architected correctly, but that every tiny, unfamiliar element compounds the inability to attain flow. We chastise one another for being self-centered and dismissing others' work as incompetent without objective reason, but within our own brains there's a very real reason. I suppose it is self-centered by definition, though. :-)
the above talks about TDCS, but also meditation, bright lights, playing music. Good read
>Yet you don't have to be a pro to experience it - some people report the same ability to focus at a far earlier stage in their training, suggesting they are more naturally predisposed to the flow state than others.
Or maybe flow is what happens when your brain is concentrating, regardless of your knowledge/experience level.
A more accurate way to display it is -- bare with me -- watching replays in Starcraft 2. I've played the original for years and the sequal since its beta release and I am fairly aware of my limitations, but just once in a while I am able to lock in and accomplish much more intense output than what I'm typically capable of (replays back this up too). I'm not a pro, I still have much to learn but it doesn't mean I can't "lock in".