Page 5 - IAV Digital Magazine #418

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Students Zap Their Brains For a Boost, For Better Or Worse
By Riley Beggin
Last October, Matt Herich was listening to the news while he drove door to door delivering pizzas. A story came on the radio about a tech- nology that sends an electric current through your brain to possibly make you better at some things — moving, remembering, learning. He was fascinated.
The neurotechnology is called transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS for short. At its simplest, the method involves a device that uses little more than a 9- volt battery and some electrodes to send a low-intensity electrical current to a targeted area of the brain, typical- ly via a headset.
More than a 1,000 stud- ies have been published in peer-reviewed jour- nals over the last decade suggesting ben- efits of the technique — maybe regulating mood, possiblyimproving lan- guage skills — but its effects, good or bad, are far from clear.
Although researchers see possibilities for tDCS in treating dis- eases and boosting per- formance, it's still an exploratory technology, says Mark George, edi- tor-in-chief ofBrain Stimulation, a leading journal on neuromodula- tion. And leading experts havewarned against at-
home use of such devices.
"If we can figure out safe long-term applica- tions, it's so inexpen- sive we might be able to use it to boost tons of things," says George, a professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. "But I have to underline might — we don't know yet."
When Herich finished his shift delivering piz- zas, he raced home and began googling. He found a thriving community on Reddit and other online forums dedicated to dis- cussing ways to self- administer tDCS.
After reading some sci- entific studies on neu- rostimulation, Herich decided to give it a try. He eventually got his hands on a rudimentary tDCS device made by a student at Northern Arizona University.
"I did my research before I put the device on my head," Herich says. "So it was a mix between me being confi- dent it would be safe and me taking a leap of faith."
In his opinion, the leap of faith paid off. Herich takes online courses on machine learning, and he says that one 20- minute session of tDCS puts him in a state of intense focus that
increases his productivi- ty and helps him learn abstract math much faster than before.
Herich is not alone — beyond the DIY neu- rostimulation community, companies are cashing in on the phenomenon, offering brain stimulation kits and ready-to-wear headsets, like Thync and Halo. While the simplest devices can be made with items found in a hardware store, the best-selling versions like ActivaDoseor the Foc.us can cost more than $300.
And sales of the devices spike at fairly regular times, says Robin Azzam, CEO of a lead- ing tDCS retailer Caputron: around col- lege midterms and finals. Caputron also helps point customers to academic studies about
tDCS. And Azzam says articles on cognitive enhancement are in par- ticularly high demand during exam times.
George says he's also heard students are using tDCS to study for exams, but he doesn't recommend it: There isn't enough data to back up claims that it is effective or safe.
He says an updated arti- cle will be published soon detailing the experts' concerns about liberal use of tDCS by the DIY community. The main worries include the risks of mistakes in administration by ama- teurs and the uncertainty of long-term harmful effects of the technique.
Besides, George says, at-home users that attempt to study with the device may actually be
doing themselves a dis- service.
"When we learn some- thing, we're more likely to remember it in the same environment as when we learned it," he says. "So if you study with one of these devices on and then you take your test without the device, you've violat- ed that rule. You may be very good with it on, but unless they allow you to do that in the exam you're actually hurting yourself."
Plus, the safety of devices can vary — given that most tDCS devices aren't marketed with specific medical claims, they are not reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration.
"A lot of the people that buy these think that they're safe because a
company is allowed to sell them," says Vince Clark, director of the Psychology Clinical Neuroscience Center at the University of New Mexico. "What they don't know is that a lot of those devices are never evalu- ated by the FDA. They go to mar- ket without safe- ty studies that everybody expects must have happened. They haven't."
But like users read the literature that supports and con- demns tDCS use outside of clinical settings and choose to move forward anyway. And according to one academic review of the do-it-yourself brain stimulation community, most DIYers do draw heavily on existing sci- entific knowledge, circu- late academic journal articles and adopt the standard electrode placement used by sci- entists.
"I do understand the risks," Herich says. "I know ... the nature of what it is that I'm doing, connecting a 9-volt to the forehead." He acknowledges that to many people it may sound crazy. "I don't know," he says, "I think I just accept that risk."
Herich, many
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