Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, my heart
Speaker 1: is human, my blood is boiling my brain IBM. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Focalon, and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey
Speaker 1: you two. Yes, Joe, do you ever wish you were
Speaker 1: smarter smarter than you are? Now? Yes? I constantly wish
Speaker 1: I were smarter than I am. Usually every time we're
Speaker 1: doing research about something like, uh, you know, the inner
Speaker 1: workings of the brain or particle physics. That's what I'm like,
Speaker 1: Oh man, that would be that would be great. Wish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wish both of you were smarter too, Thanks Joe. No,
Speaker 1: I also wish that I was smarter. It would be
Speaker 1: wonderful to understand all those things that can be so difficult.
Speaker 1: But one of the funny things about intelligence is there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different aspects to it, right. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's not just one thing. So you have like a
Speaker 1: memory retention or different types of information processing, spatial reasoning,
Speaker 1: verbal memorization. Just memory memory, and then there's verbal memory.
Speaker 1: There's there's linguistic processing. There's all this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that is, uh, you know, the domain of the brain.
Speaker 1: And it's not like one tiny section of the brain
Speaker 1: is in control of all of it. This is spread
Speaker 1: across multiple regions of our brains depending upon what sort
Speaker 1: of processing you're talking about, and many of these things
Speaker 1: are very interconnected. It's not like, for just verbal reasoning,
Speaker 1: there's one section of the brain that operates completely independently
Speaker 1: of everything, right, Right, But so all I'm saying is
Speaker 1: I'd settle for improving just one part of my brain.
Speaker 1: If I could just improve my memory or just improve
Speaker 1: my spatial reasoning or anything like that, that that would
Speaker 1: also be great. I wouldn't even have to be the
Speaker 1: whole picture. But it's hard to do that, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Like how do you go about powering up your brain?
Speaker 1: As if you you just like ate a berry in
Speaker 1: a video game and and now you're larger or have wings,
Speaker 1: or you throw fire leveled up somehow you got a
Speaker 1: little ding and suddenly you can add a point to intelligence. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We talked about this a little bit in our last episode,
Speaker 1: where we were chatting about the various types of neuro
Speaker 1: enhancing chemicals. Some of them being like dietary supplements or
Speaker 1: or just stuff you would get if you're eating a nice,
Speaker 1: healthy diet. Some of them being things like medications used
Speaker 1: for one purpose being repurposed to be a neuro enhancement drug. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's not the only way that some people are
Speaker 1: looking at trying to boost how the brain works. No,
Speaker 1: not at all. So the reasoning is that the brain
Speaker 1: is an electrochemical machine. And in the last podcast we
Speaker 1: talked about how, well, if it's an electrochemical machine, surely
Speaker 1: there must be some sort of chemical ways to make
Speaker 1: it work a little bit better. Now we want to
Speaker 1: look at the other half of the equation. Are their
Speaker 1: devices sort of a electrical or electromagnetic pieces of technology
Speaker 1: that might actually improve your brain function, make it more efficient,
Speaker 1: more powerful in one way or another. Right, whether that
Speaker 1: is something that you use to to alter your brain
Speaker 1: in some way and therefore you from that point forward
Speaker 1: are super smart, or it's something that you are apparently wearing,
Speaker 1: either on a regular basis or maybe even permanently to
Speaker 1: enhance your brain's function. So, if you think of it
Speaker 1: from superhero terms, we're moving from say a a an
Speaker 1: altered human like Spider Man to perhaps a human that
Speaker 1: is using technology to boost their abilities, like Tony Stark
Speaker 1: an iron Man. So we're going from the the chemical
Speaker 1: changes to the technologically boosted type human basically like, can
Speaker 1: you put on a helmet that makes you a genius? Yes,
Speaker 1: that's what we're looking at today. So, uh, what's interesting
Speaker 1: is that that seems like a silly question to most
Speaker 1: people like you, Like you're literally putting on a thinking cap.
Speaker 1: You really are being able to boost your intelligence some
Speaker 1: of these examples, Yeah, a little bit in a possible
Speaker 1: future way. Yeah. The the downer is, folks, the brain,
Speaker 1: as we said in our last episode. Despite the fact
Speaker 1: that it's been a couple of days since we recorded
Speaker 1: that last episode, there's a peak behind the curtain. It
Speaker 1: has actually been a couple of days since we recorded
Speaker 1: augmenting the brain with chemicals. In that time, we have
Speaker 1: not learned significantly more about how the human brain works. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we as a species now it's still more or less
Speaker 1: a mystery to us. We regret to inform you. Yes,
Speaker 1: So that means, of course that any sort of boost
Speaker 1: we see is something that's based upon just a limited understanding,
Speaker 1: and it may not mean you know, that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean there's not an effect there. It just means that
Speaker 1: we don't know how great that effect is. We don't
Speaker 1: know if we are producing the best effect, We don't
Speaker 1: know what the long term effects of it, be sure,
Speaker 1: and it also unfortunately opens the door to a certain
Speaker 1: amount of quackery and scam artists. Kennery, Well, we should
Speaker 1: always start with scams whenever possible. You have you found
Speaker 1: any or there any anybody out there selling like genius
Speaker 1: helmets there? Well, I'm sure there's some novelty ones out there,
Speaker 1: but there are also some that some devices that are
Speaker 1: being marketed as things that can make your brain work better,
Speaker 1: and most of them are based on no scientific rounding whatsoever.
Speaker 1: I've pulled one example, just out of all the different
Speaker 1: ones that you could find if you really wanted to
Speaker 1: do some searching, one is the ch Generator, which is
Speaker 1: a device that supposedly can and I quote here charge
Speaker 1: food drinks and supplements with trend characteristics. So what does
Speaker 1: that mean? I don't know, And there's no explanation. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's if you look at the web page, it's all
Speaker 1: meaningless babble that's meant to suggest that this little device
Speaker 1: that looks like a key chain fall when you pointed
Speaker 1: at stuff, shoots it with smart beams that then will
Speaker 1: make it turn into smart stuff when you consume it.
Speaker 1: Sounds ye, it's it's mostly based upon the concept, the
Speaker 1: cultural concept of qi, you know, the this idea of
Speaker 1: energy that flows through the body that has very strong
Speaker 1: significance in certain cultures but does not have any support
Speaker 1: in the world of science. So, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: mean to suggest that people who who follow that philosophy
Speaker 1: are doing so in some way that is, you know,
Speaker 1: is bad. I don't mean that there's just not science
Speaker 1: supported well, and I do believe that some research has
Speaker 1: supported a certain amount of placebo effect if nothing else
Speaker 1: absolutely related to so sure, Well, there's a difference between
Speaker 1: something having a legitimate cultural significance or a meaning for
Speaker 1: a person and being a physical substance. Right. Also, the
Speaker 1: term trend characteristics makes me think that they're doing something
Speaker 1: with I don't know, like Twitter and search search engine optimization,
Speaker 1: hashtag quackery. Um no, it's at any rate, there are
Speaker 1: things out there, There are devices out there that aim
Speaker 1: to make people believe that they would help increase cognitive function.
Speaker 1: In some way. Usually it's you know, the very vague
Speaker 1: terms like focus and memory. But those are the same
Speaker 1: vague terms that we have to use for the things
Speaker 1: that are are actually supported by science, because, as we
Speaker 1: just said, the brain is very mysterious and to be
Speaker 1: able to zero in on a very specific function is
Speaker 1: beyond our capabilities as of right now. But we might
Speaker 1: be getting there. Yeah, we're certainly working on it, I
Speaker 1: mean legitimately working on it. Yes, and then then you know,
Speaker 1: beyond the the outright kind of you know, this almost
Speaker 1: feels like a, like I said, a novelty item in
Speaker 1: a way, there's a the idea of brain entrainment. Now
Speaker 1: have you this before? I saw your note and I
Speaker 1: was very intrigued. Right, So, have you ever heard of uh,
Speaker 1: binaural beats? Have you ever heard that term? Binaral beats?
Speaker 1: It tends to be this stuff that it's supposedly targets
Speaker 1: your brain in very specific ways to get a specific result,
Speaker 1: such as being able to boost confidence or boost your
Speaker 1: your ability to process things that you had learned that day.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, but what are they? Okay? So binoral beats,
Speaker 1: it's generally speaking, it's when you have a certain tone
Speaker 1: of a certain frequency played within one ear, and a
Speaker 1: different tone with a different frequency. I mean those are
Speaker 1: that's kind of I'm being redundant, I guess being played
Speaker 1: in the other ear. It sounds so it sounds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're actually listening to these and that's where the oral
Speaker 1: comes from. It's binaural. You can also get monaural, which
Speaker 1: are single tones in both ears. But the idea is
Speaker 1: that these these different tones are supposed to create a
Speaker 1: resonance in your brain waves. And that sounds pretty on
Speaker 1: of you know, uh, like pseudoscience, but that actually is
Speaker 1: based on reality. Are are We do have brain waves. Uh,
Speaker 1: they do transmit in frequencies, but usually they're transmitting in
Speaker 1: little bursts. Like when I say a little burst, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about millions of neurons at once. But we have
Speaker 1: like eighty billion of these in our heads, so millions
Speaker 1: is a small amount over the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 1: But uh, they generally you don't have them kind of
Speaker 1: resonating in in a frequency over and over unless you're
Speaker 1: going to sleep, because your brain actually does the activity
Speaker 1: changes during the different phases of alertness. Right, this is
Speaker 1: all based on science. So when neurons fired, they give
Speaker 1: up these little electric and magnetic fields which are usually
Speaker 1: too weak to detect individually, like a single neurons electric
Speaker 1: or magnetic field is so is so insignificant that you
Speaker 1: if you actually in the face of all of the
Speaker 1: other stuff that's going on in there, right if you
Speaker 1: if you had an electrode attached to your scalp and
Speaker 1: you're trying to pick up the activity of a single neuron,
Speaker 1: that's pretty hopeless. But when they are firing together, you
Speaker 1: can obviously detect that sort of thing. Um, So the
Speaker 1: effect is real, this effect of being able to make
Speaker 1: the brain resonate and and fire in frequency. This is
Speaker 1: why if you have ever played a video game that
Speaker 1: has that warning ahead of it saying warning there are
Speaker 1: a lot of flashing lights. Yeah, yeah, gone into a
Speaker 1: into a show or a ride an amusement park. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of these will say you know, there there
Speaker 1: may be flashing lights. So anyone who is prone to
Speaker 1: epileptic seizures might want to avoid. And that's because the
Speaker 1: those lights can create what's called photic driving, which is
Speaker 1: a rapid stimulation of the light affecting a part of
Speaker 1: the brain that the visual processing center of the brain,
Speaker 1: which then can trigger this abnormal neural impulse, uh fit
Speaker 1: an epileptic seizure. It's a it's sort of an overstimulation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like, you know, your whole brain
Speaker 1: just starts firing uncontrollably and that then you see the
Speaker 1: various results, and you know, epileptic seizures manifest in different ways.
Speaker 1: The one that we tend to think of as the
Speaker 1: one where someone has lost motor control and falls over,
Speaker 1: and it's it's incredibly stressful if you've ever witnessed one,
Speaker 1: um or or if you've ever had one, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's very a very stressful thing. But uh, that is
Speaker 1: also something that we can induce like a brain resonance.
Speaker 1: Not not an epileptic seizure necessarily, but this this resonating
Speaker 1: frequency in the brain, and its by purposeful exposure to
Speaker 1: light pattern light pattern or or sound patterns. So the
Speaker 1: binaural beats. While you know, they're suggesting that they can
Speaker 1: do things like increase your abilities in some either vague
Speaker 1: way or sometimes they'll claim a specific way, what they're
Speaker 1: really doing is they might allow your brain to again
Speaker 1: sort of sort of move in this this frequency, the
Speaker 1: neural activity will kind of flow with this frequency, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't change the activity itself. It does doesn't change
Speaker 1: the function of the brain. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: you get Imagine that you have like a large body
Speaker 1: of water and you see like all the little waves
Speaker 1: that are on the water. Imagine that you were able
Speaker 1: to get them to move in a perfect frequency. Well,
Speaker 1: the water is still moving the water, the activity is
Speaker 1: still going, but it's not like it's suddenly better at
Speaker 1: moving water than it was before. And when you turn
Speaker 1: the machine off, then it stops moving the water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and your brain and it turns back to normal. It's
Speaker 1: normal thing. Yeah. So the thing is that the science
Speaker 1: is there to suggest that that there are these times
Speaker 1: when our brains will fire in these kind of resonating frequencies.
Speaker 1: Like I said, they offer rhythm. That's when you're awake.
Speaker 1: That's the least likely for it to be really kind
Speaker 1: of resonating, but that's when your brain is the brainways
Speaker 1: are moving at a frequency between eight to twelve hurts
Speaker 1: uh theda rhythm is when you're kind of getting drowsy,
Speaker 1: that's a frequency around six to seven hurts, and deep
Speaker 1: sleep is the delta range. That's when you're talking about
Speaker 1: four to five hurts and by neural beats kind of
Speaker 1: try to get your brain to fire in these frequencies
Speaker 1: that are similar to usually the fada or delta stages
Speaker 1: and so um, yeah, it's it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that it is an actual effect. The entrainment really does happen,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't it doesn't result in increased cognitive functions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's it just it just is a thing like and
Speaker 1: you can it might be something that's useful for you
Speaker 1: to relax, to get into kind of a meditative state
Speaker 1: which might help you deal with stress or anxiety. It's
Speaker 1: not that there aren't any viable uses for this. There are.
Speaker 1: It's just a question of is the is the the
Speaker 1: advertised effect of getting some gained cognitive ability actually scientifically grounded,
Speaker 1: and that so far is not the case as Yeah,
Speaker 1: pending further research. I'm sure if you, I don't know,
Speaker 1: reverse the polarity or something like that exactly, but well,
Speaker 1: I'd like to transition to a different topic, something that
Speaker 1: actually does have some science behind it, albeit limited science,
Speaker 1: but there have been actual results around something called transcranial
Speaker 1: direct current stimulation. Now Joe are you about to suggest
Speaker 1: that a person could maybe put a couple of electrodes
Speaker 1: against their head and zapp some current through their skull
Speaker 1: and actually change the way their brain is functioning. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but there are some preliminary scientific results
Speaker 1: that suggest that might be the case, and it's something
Speaker 1: that we need to learn a lot more about. But yes,
Speaker 1: that is essentially what is being suggested. Put direct external
Speaker 1: application of electric current to the scalp and that that
Speaker 1: affects the way the brain works positively is the allegation
Speaker 1: the goal. You don't, we don't. We're not talking about
Speaker 1: some sort Jack Bauer torture device from twenty four where,
Speaker 1: you know, flip the switch, make them talk. It's not
Speaker 1: quite like no, no, no, no no, okay. So, transcranial direct
Speaker 1: current stimulation or t DCS is the technique of stimulating
Speaker 1: the brain with small amounts and we want to emphasize
Speaker 1: small amount of electrical current applied directly to the scalp,
Speaker 1: to the skin on your head. And it's possible that
Speaker 1: this could treat certain diseases or disorders in the future,
Speaker 1: but right now it is not FDA approved for these purposes.
Speaker 1: There's an FDA approved method that's similar to this they'll
Speaker 1: talk about in a little bit, but this particular case
Speaker 1: not yet approved by the FDA, but it is being
Speaker 1: used in experimental cases in various researches. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in just a minute. But why would this work,
Speaker 1: I mean, why would it actually even have an effect
Speaker 1: on the brain to apply a little bit of electrical
Speaker 1: current to the skin on your head. Well, in general,
Speaker 1: we we do run on electrical current. Yeah, our our
Speaker 1: neurons are communicating with each other or through these electrochemical reactions.
Speaker 1: And we covered the chemical side. It turns out the
Speaker 1: electric electric side also plays a part. If you bus
Speaker 1: any part of your body, it's going to have an
Speaker 1: effect on your not a system, yes, yeah, I have
Speaker 1: Usually it's a negative effect in my case, So please
Speaker 1: do not buzz any part of my body. I would
Speaker 1: appreciate that. This is just a note for everybody, including
Speaker 1: the people in this room. Okay, but what's going on
Speaker 1: here specifically, Jonathan, Well, specifically, we're talking about stimulating the
Speaker 1: activity that's already going on in the brain by kind
Speaker 1: of boosting the current. Now, the general ideas that if
Speaker 1: you have a like a microprocessor, one of the ways
Speaker 1: you can make the microprocessor work faster is by pouring
Speaker 1: more juice into it than it normally would have. Mean electricity,
Speaker 1: not literal juice, orange, just particularly affective UH antioxidants. Aside,
Speaker 1: we're talking about electricity here. Yeah, electricity is specifically what
Speaker 1: I'm referring to. But as we need to stress multiple times,
Speaker 1: I'm sure this small amount of current is what's important
Speaker 1: because if you if you were to overload your brain,
Speaker 1: you could do severe damage. You could injure yourself, you
Speaker 1: could kill yourself. Um, I mean that's electrocution is a
Speaker 1: real thing. So it's very, very vital that anyone working
Speaker 1: in this kind of arena would practice lots of caution.
Speaker 1: And the reason we say that is because while we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking a lot about some of the research
Speaker 1: that's gone around this particular field, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people out there who are just charging ahead with
Speaker 1: d I o Y projects to create these do it
Speaker 1: yourself electrodes attached to their heads so that they can
Speaker 1: try and get a boost from electrical stimulation. And if
Speaker 1: you don't do that correctly, you could really really hurt yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we do not personally recommend trying this at home, even
Speaker 1: if you do do it correctly. I think we're not
Speaker 1: entirely sure what the long term of facts with doing
Speaker 1: this over time might be. Either. We have no clue
Speaker 1: if there are any long term effects that could end
Speaker 1: up being detrimental. We know that in the short term. Uh,
Speaker 1: we've seen what can happen, and and the results are
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Yeah, under very specific conditions. The Air Force
Speaker 1: was doing some research into this. Yeah right, yeah, so
Speaker 1: the Air Force was using t dcs to help train
Speaker 1: drone pilots. So what were the effects. Well. Scientific American
Speaker 1: covered this story in November two thousand eleven after scientists
Speaker 1: from the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air
Speaker 1: Force Base reported their findings at a meeting of neuroscientists
Speaker 1: earlier that month in November two thousand eleven, And what
Speaker 1: they found was they tested t dcs on drone pilots
Speaker 1: who were learning to pick out potential targets from radar feedback.
Speaker 1: The pilots practiced this on video simulations kind of like
Speaker 1: you know, like a video game. When the pilots just
Speaker 1: their skills, they received small amounts of electrical current from
Speaker 1: patches placed on the scalp and they said it was
Speaker 1: two milliampiars of continuous DC current for half an hour
Speaker 1: thirty minutes. And the study found that tDCS could potentially
Speaker 1: cut training time in half. That's doubling the speed of
Speaker 1: learning really significant, which is quite significant. Yeah, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, it's not a done deal because I mean,
Speaker 1: could the placebo effect be partially or wholly responsible. One
Speaker 1: of the things about this is when it's happening, you
Speaker 1: feel a tingling, you know it's going on. So it's
Speaker 1: hard in this case to give somebody a placebo pill
Speaker 1: basically too to cover the you know. So it's like
Speaker 1: if you if you hooked up patches to somebody's head
Speaker 1: and didn't give them the current, they would know because
Speaker 1: they didn't feel it. Actually, there is another study where
Speaker 1: they did try to control for that to replicate the
Speaker 1: tingling sensation without actually running an electrical current through the
Speaker 1: uh the electrodes, so that the subjects would not know
Speaker 1: whether or not they were uh having me any current
Speaker 1: passed through their brain. Uh. It was a Vanderbilt University
Speaker 1: study and they used a a sham condition that replicated
Speaker 1: the physical tingling sensation under the electrodes without affecting the brain.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what that was like. I don't
Speaker 1: know how they achieved this, but what they did was
Speaker 1: they took subjects and they attached these electrodes to their
Speaker 1: to their scalp, and in some cases they ran the
Speaker 1: occurrence and the control they did not, and the subjects
Speaker 1: were told to play a game essentially where there was
Speaker 1: a color shown on a screen and they were to
Speaker 1: hit a certain button on a video game controller that
Speaker 1: was going to correspond with that color, and then occasionally
Speaker 1: they would get a message saying not to push any
Speaker 1: button at all. And it was done at about a
Speaker 1: second per image. And it was one of those things
Speaker 1: where it was just complicated enough where most people, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a learning curve you have to figure out.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, no, no, no, no, not exactly. So it
Speaker 1: was one of those things where there were a lot
Speaker 1: of potential ways to get something wrong. And they found
Speaker 1: that when they ran the current UH, they were actually
Speaker 1: able to boost people's ability to learn from their mistakes.
Speaker 1: They would learn more quickly and be able to complete
Speaker 1: the task with fewer errors in the long run because
Speaker 1: they picked up on things faster than the control group did.
Speaker 1: So here you're talking about not just a continuous level
Speaker 1: of direct current, but you're talking about dynamic transcranial stimulation, right,
Speaker 1: so that it responds to what they do with different
Speaker 1: levels of current. It was meant to. Uh So, when
Speaker 1: we make a mistake and we're aware of it. When
Speaker 1: we become aware of a mistake, there's little spike of
Speaker 1: neuronal activity that happens in our brain. And these scientists said,
Speaker 1: what happens if we amplify that spike, which to me
Speaker 1: just makes me think of Egon saying, let's see what
Speaker 1: happens when we take the puppy A yeah, but they
Speaker 1: want the goal. Remember when you tried to shock your brain.
Speaker 1: Actually I was trying to drill a hole in your head.
Speaker 1: No current topic. That's current topic. Very good, So you
Speaker 1: brought it onto yourself, all right? At any rate, that
Speaker 1: what they found was that by by boosting the signal
Speaker 1: that was going through the head, whenever someone realized they
Speaker 1: made a mistake, it didn't make the person feel bad.
Speaker 1: They didn't. All they would feel was a little light
Speaker 1: tingling from the electrodes. Okay, so you're not talking about
Speaker 1: like negative reinforcement with like shocking you painfully. This was
Speaker 1: literally a type of activity in the brain that we
Speaker 1: are unaware of consciously, but it does guide us in
Speaker 1: learning through our mistakes, and that they found that by
Speaker 1: boosting it, people learned faster, which is kind of cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like that. If it means that I will learn
Speaker 1: more quickly, but I won't be feeling like super stupid
Speaker 1: for making mistakes. I'm all in favor. If, however, it
Speaker 1: just makes me learn so that I haven't because I
Speaker 1: have an aversion to feeling dumb, that's not so good.
Speaker 1: That would be rough. I mean I I guess it
Speaker 1: would be, you know, feeling intensely dumb for half the time.
Speaker 1: Of course, the thing they're like, if you're going to
Speaker 1: try to create a genius helmet out of that, that
Speaker 1: seems like it it would be harder to do. Like if
Speaker 1: you're just boosting your general brain power with continuous direct
Speaker 1: current and see, okay, you've got a helmet, you put
Speaker 1: it on while you're researching for the podcast or studying
Speaker 1: for test, whatever it is, and and you've learned things faster,
Speaker 1: you retain more. How if you're trying to do this
Speaker 1: other thing where it lets you reinforce learning from mistakes.
Speaker 1: How does the helmet know when you've made a mistake, Well,
Speaker 1: it would have to be hooked up to the system.
Speaker 1: So what would happen is you have to be some
Speaker 1: kind of like error detecting program. Well, essentially what you
Speaker 1: have is you think of it as a video game
Speaker 1: and you just have the helmet hooked up to the
Speaker 1: video game. And when you didn't press jump when you
Speaker 1: needed to press jump, that's when the helmet just goes
Speaker 1: ahead and boost the signal because it knows that you
Speaker 1: didn't do what you need is to do well. But
Speaker 1: if you don't pronounce anaphylactic correctly, how does the helmet
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean that's there's some serious That's the
Speaker 1: thing is that it all depends upon the implementation of
Speaker 1: what you're using to learn. See, in this case, it
Speaker 1: was specifically seeing if this stimulation would help with learning
Speaker 1: a specific task. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily translatable
Speaker 1: into any task you totally. That's what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: if we're imagining this is like you know, down the
Speaker 1: road in the future, Okay, we've decided this is safe
Speaker 1: and you want it for your home technology, This would
Speaker 1: put it all on schools and kids in school coming
Speaker 1: and they put these big electrode things on that. It
Speaker 1: seems like this kind of thing would be more useful
Speaker 1: for like controlled learning situations where there's some kind of
Speaker 1: system for detecting errors. But I don't know. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: it comes down to it, it won't turn you into
Speaker 1: a super genius. No, it doesn't. It doesn't suddenly mean that,
Speaker 1: you know, you zap your head and you can start
Speaker 1: rattling off, you know, complex quantum equations and you totally
Speaker 1: understand it. It just means that a lot of the
Speaker 1: processes that you would go through have kind of become
Speaker 1: streamlined because you've got a little more electricity running through
Speaker 1: your brain. But that's kind of what these people creating
Speaker 1: these d I Y kids are going for, right, the
Speaker 1: super genius thing. Yeah, it's at least they're looking to
Speaker 1: looking to boost their ability, their their cognitive abilities. And again,
Speaker 1: just like we were talking with the the resonance, if
Speaker 1: you turn the machine off, you lose that that boost because, uh,
Speaker 1: it's no longer supplying that extra electricity to your brain
Speaker 1: for those processes. It's fine when you're if you're learning
Speaker 1: something by memorization, then you're going to retain that information.
Speaker 1: And so if you were, like I don't know, an
Speaker 1: actor studying for a part and you wanted to learn
Speaker 1: your lines and half the time it normally took you,
Speaker 1: that might end up being a really effective way of
Speaker 1: doing it. But if you're trying to understand a concept,
Speaker 1: it may not be as useful to you. Yeah, part
Speaker 1: of the problem is despite the fact that we have
Speaker 1: some research on this, there's still a lot we don't know. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're just we just need to do a lot more
Speaker 1: research on this before we know how big the actual
Speaker 1: effect is, if there is one there. I think there
Speaker 1: probably is some effect that's real and not just placebo,
Speaker 1: but we don't know for sure. We want to find
Speaker 1: out if that is real, how big is the effect,
Speaker 1: what's the best way to use it, Are there long
Speaker 1: term side effects, the reasons you shouldn't do it too,
Speaker 1: what's the actual mechanism. I mean, we don't understand the
Speaker 1: full mechanism in the brain yet. So this is this
Speaker 1: is like saying we found this thing that makes us
Speaker 1: do something a little better than what we could do before.
Speaker 1: We don't understand how we're able to do that. Thing
Speaker 1: in the first place, and we don't know why this
Speaker 1: thing makes it easier for us to accomplish this task.
Speaker 1: So without knowing those basics, is it really safe to
Speaker 1: go down this road? I mean it maybe, but we
Speaker 1: don't know whether or not. We know a lot of
Speaker 1: people are into this idea. They're so. In May, Wired
Speaker 1: ran a story covering the d I Y movement in
Speaker 1: transcranial direct current stimulation. People who are just making kits,
Speaker 1: or some people are selling kits online that you can order.
Speaker 1: Some people make them themselves out of a nine vault
Speaker 1: battery and some wet sponges. I'm I've thought about doing this.
Speaker 1: I've actually I'm a little bit tempted. But I know,
Speaker 1: I know we should reserve, we should be cautious. I
Speaker 1: know that. I know that for me, I'd be able
Speaker 1: to get a really good seal against the scalp because
Speaker 1: there ain't nothing there to impede it. Yeah, electric electric
Speaker 1: shock or electric convulsive therapy is one of my actual
Speaker 1: like squicks in this universe. So that's not that's not
Speaker 1: where but at any rate, Well, anyway, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about the public interest in this. In that
Speaker 1: Wired article, I mentioned they said at the time, this
Speaker 1: was May of this year. Uh, they mentioned that there's
Speaker 1: a subreddit did did to the practice, because of course
Speaker 1: there is with four thousand subscribers. I was like, I
Speaker 1: wonder what that number is today. I went back and
Speaker 1: checked it. It has grown. There are now five thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred and forty five subscribers as of today to
Speaker 1: this d I y T DCS subreddit. So people are
Speaker 1: are thinking about doing it, some people are actually doing it.
Speaker 1: It's out there and and I wonder are we losing
Speaker 1: our edge? I mean, are these other Are these guys
Speaker 1: on Reddit getting smarter than people? I hear that this
Speaker 1: American Life does their podcast while doing this transcribing current.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm just saying that if we just want
Speaker 1: to stay competitive, guys, we have to you know, we
Speaker 1: have to consider this. Um, if you are actually using
Speaker 1: the the one to two milla amps of current, which
Speaker 1: is the way typically these these devices, that's the typical output. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's not enough for you to cause a neuron to
Speaker 1: fire off on a zone, but you do facilitate the connections,
Speaker 1: the neuronal connections between neurons. So, but that's really important
Speaker 1: to note that that's within that one to two milliamps
Speaker 1: of current, and do you think anything over that? And
Speaker 1: you really that's dangerous stuff. It's not necessarily safe just
Speaker 1: with the one to too. Like Joe was saying before,
Speaker 1: we don't know what the long term effects are. So
Speaker 1: while I am certainly curious about this, I don't know
Speaker 1: that I would ever actually put on the stuff and
Speaker 1: snap a battery in place and see if that actually
Speaker 1: works for me, because I kind of value my brain
Speaker 1: and I don't want to find out that. Because I
Speaker 1: did that twenty years down the road, I can't think
Speaker 1: of anything other than old episodes of happy Days or something.
Speaker 1: I knew you were going to say, happy Days. I
Speaker 1: really did you were going to say. I rejected two
Speaker 1: others before I said that one in my brain. It
Speaker 1: must be because we've got these wires going from skull
Speaker 1: to skull. Why we have these we just woke up
Speaker 1: that way. Don't worry about it. This American life like
Speaker 1: and all of their hosts connected directly cranulator. Uh well,
Speaker 1: at any rate, there's another there's another technique that is
Speaker 1: uh non invasive, that's very similar to this. In fact,
Speaker 1: it proceeds direct current stimulation. Transcranial magnetic stimulation. Now, we
Speaker 1: mentioned that when neurons fire, they give off a little
Speaker 1: electronic electric field and a little magnetic field. That's because
Speaker 1: of the the relationship between electricity and magnetism. Right, there's
Speaker 1: there's we know very much a lot about this, this relationship. Well,
Speaker 1: it's similar, but it uses electro magnets instead of electrodes
Speaker 1: to stimulate the brain. And usually it's used for people
Speaker 1: who are suffering from depression. It's one of the potential
Speaker 1: treatments for people with depression, and it may or may
Speaker 1: not work on people who are actually suffering from depression.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not a cure. It's not some magic
Speaker 1: that takes the depression away. But it can be an
Speaker 1: effective treatment for some people. Whether or not it's effective
Speaker 1: because of the actual mechanism or because of the placebo
Speaker 1: effect is also really complicated. The brain, like we said,
Speaker 1: is a big mystery, and sometimes if you think something works,
Speaker 1: it has the effect of working even though there's no
Speaker 1: actual mechanism going on. So too complicated for us to say. However,
Speaker 1: it is a treatment that's been approved by the FDA.
Speaker 1: I think it got approval back in two thousand eight
Speaker 1: actually for the treatment of depression, because again it's non invasive,
Speaker 1: it's using electromagnets, it's not harmful in any way, and
Speaker 1: it's meant to stimulate activity in certain parts of the
Speaker 1: brain particularly either stimulate or to impede activity, depending upon
Speaker 1: how you're targeting it. But like the area of the
Speaker 1: brain that is involved with directing moods would be what
Speaker 1: would be targeted in UH in a treatment for depression.
Speaker 1: And how effective it actually is in this method hasn't
Speaker 1: been completely supported by science yet. There's been a lot
Speaker 1: of stays that have had some efficacy shown, but you
Speaker 1: know that again could be within the realm of error. UM.
Speaker 1: There's disagreement in the field about whether or not it's
Speaker 1: actually an effective treatment. Meanwhile, UM people have actually thought
Speaker 1: about using it as a means of trying to make
Speaker 1: themselves smarter, just like the d I Y transcranial direct
Speaker 1: current stimulation. People have tried to use the magnetic stimulation
Speaker 1: as well UH. And there is one researcher by the
Speaker 1: name of Alan Snyder who claims that it has an
Speaker 1: effect on creativity different from what we've been saying earlier.
Speaker 1: He said that it's a different, different, form of intelligence entirely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He talked about using UH sessions, using this transcranial magnetic
Speaker 1: stimulation and finding that the subjects were able of subjects
Speaker 1: were able to express things artistically that apparently they had
Speaker 1: limited or no ability to do before, which to me
Speaker 1: seems pretty bold. That's a pretty subjective sounding statement, but
Speaker 1: I haven't read the research. Maybe it's a little Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they also said that the effects were off after
Speaker 1: like an a half, so it's not something like you
Speaker 1: you wear this cap, you turn on the switch and
Speaker 1: you become the next Picasso. Uh. Your ability to express
Speaker 1: yourself creatively may suddenly be boosted, and it maybe because
Speaker 1: you have this boosted activity in that part of your brain,
Speaker 1: but that is all due to the stimulation, and once
Speaker 1: the stimulation is removed, you go back to your normal
Speaker 1: state of being. So it's entirely possible that it could
Speaker 1: have a very similar effect to the direct current stimulation,
Speaker 1: but it may just be this temporary boost temporary and
Speaker 1: in a slightly slightly skewed different different way there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did want to put in that this electromagnetic therapy
Speaker 1: is an alternative to electric convulsive therapy electric shock therapy,
Speaker 1: which we just mentioned a moment ago. Uh. And in
Speaker 1: in contrast to you know, popular media portrayals, today, electrochock
Speaker 1: therapy is considered pretty safe and effective in treating severe
Speaker 1: depression where medication has failed to help. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't even realize this. They think
Speaker 1: of it as some kind of barbaric, outdated thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thing that happened in the sixties, or just to Ellen
Speaker 1: Burston and requien for a dream or something like that,
Speaker 1: Dorothy and return to Oz main character and sucker punch.
Speaker 1: That's that. That whole Dorothy and returned to Oz thing
Speaker 1: is why I have a problem with electric shocks, why
Speaker 1: I have I mean, but this is a this is
Speaker 1: a treatment that actually seems to work for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and people requested. It's not like, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's only given to I think the last number
Speaker 1: that I saw was a hundred thousand patients out of
Speaker 1: every you know, multiple million who suffer from depression. But
Speaker 1: but at any rate, well, I mean, and also, your
Speaker 1: your doctor puts you under general anesthesia and gives you
Speaker 1: muscle relaxers so that you're not literally convulsive. That's it's
Speaker 1: good times relatively for everyone. But it's the The way
Speaker 1: that it works is it's a purposeful induction of a
Speaker 1: seizure via electrical stimulation, similar to what we were talking
Speaker 1: about the transcranial one before, but but more intense. And
Speaker 1: theories for why it works on depression range from it
Speaker 1: changing the blood flow or or the brain's metabolism, to
Speaker 1: changing chemical release or reuptake, to stimulation of nerve cell
Speaker 1: and pathway growth. Um. But it is definitely not a
Speaker 1: memory aid. Side effects include and as many as like
Speaker 1: a quarter to two thirds of the patients who undergo
Speaker 1: the procedure problems in forming memories after the treatment or
Speaker 1: recalling memories from before the treatment. It sounds like it
Speaker 1: has an effect on the hippocampus. Then that's from my
Speaker 1: completely amateur armchair neurologist perspective. You know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: another treatment that we're not sure why it works, but
Speaker 1: um but it does. They they have they they've done
Speaker 1: placebo studies with it where they have put some patients
Speaker 1: under the anesthesia and under the muscle relaxers and told
Speaker 1: them that they had delivered the treatment but they had
Speaker 1: not and it um it did not work. So interesting.
Speaker 1: So so there is a there is an effect here,
Speaker 1: we just don't fully understand it. This is the way
Speaker 1: a law of uh not a lot, but this is
Speaker 1: the way that some medical science goes. And it's it's both.
Speaker 1: It's it's the most dangerous in a sense in that
Speaker 1: when we start to see an effect, our hopes really
Speaker 1: get pinned on that. But until we fully understand the
Speaker 1: whole mechanism, we can't be entirely certain that this is
Speaker 1: the right path to go down. So if all things
Speaker 1: turn out great, we end up with a treatment that
Speaker 1: genuinely helps people and doesn't have any any severe negative
Speaker 1: side effects or long term effects. Uh, that's that's the
Speaker 1: best case scenario. But that's the thing is that we
Speaker 1: just don't know. So this is this is the pioneering
Speaker 1: science and medicine is fascinating, and I don't I find
Speaker 1: it um frightening in some senses. Yeah, And and that's
Speaker 1: also why you know this kind of treatment isn't I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone's doing d I Y electroshock therapy fingers crossed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really only being used for patients with severe
Speaker 1: enough depressive disorders that nothing else is working. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: the John Lithgl's character from Buck Rubon's I he he
Speaker 1: did a little do it yourself electroshock that I don't
Speaker 1: think that anyone should really follow John Let's character from
Speaker 1: Bucky Bond's Eyes anyway, lose a laughing now, monkey boy.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about external stuff as the magnetic stimulation,
Speaker 1: the transcranial direct current stimulation that's just patches on the
Speaker 1: skin might have an effect. But let's talk about something
Speaker 1: that definitely has some serious effects. Intracranial. Yeah, that's when
Speaker 1: you're actually talking about brain implants. You have to open
Speaker 1: up the skull and put a probe into a person's brain. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a surgical procedure, serious stuff, very invasive, certainly, Um,
Speaker 1: But the amount of electricity that you can deliver at
Speaker 1: that point is way less invasive then it would be
Speaker 1: if you had to put it through the skull. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you could also you could also target very specific
Speaker 1: regions of the brain this way, because you know, if
Speaker 1: you look at the is the transcranial generally speaking, you
Speaker 1: see someone who has a a like a sponge right
Speaker 1: above one eyebrow and a sponge at a temple, and
Speaker 1: that's the best you can do to try and target
Speaker 1: the brain. There's a lot of the brain and it's
Speaker 1: it's a lot of pin the tail on the donkey
Speaker 1: at that point in the tail on the brain part. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: the electric current on the brain, the cerebellum on the
Speaker 1: never mind. Um. Yeah, so this is this is much
Speaker 1: more precise in that sense, and you can target things
Speaker 1: like the hippocampus, right, which we're pretty sure sifts and
Speaker 1: files information from other parts of our brain. It's we
Speaker 1: think it's the part that forms our memories. Um. Direct
Speaker 1: stimulation to the hippocampus, though, has been shown to interfere
Speaker 1: with new memory formation. So what right, Yeah, it's it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: don't do that, um, but what else can we zap?
Speaker 1: Then we have tried what's you know, just don't don't
Speaker 1: touch that. You never know what's connected to Oh we
Speaker 1: we tried a few different areas and this this kind
Speaker 1: of treatment, these implants, um and even if they're not implants,
Speaker 1: just a just a temporary threaded electrode through the skull,
Speaker 1: has been used in management of Parkinson's depression and stuff
Speaker 1: like obsessive compulsive disorder. And we don't entirely understand Again,
Speaker 1: how it changes the brain, but it indeed does um
Speaker 1: and for some memory specific disorders. Some researchers are starting
Speaker 1: to single out areas that interact with the hippocampus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is shown to be an effective treatment for
Speaker 1: a lot of different neurological conditions and it can provide
Speaker 1: relief if you might have epilepsy or Parkinson's or something
Speaker 1: like that. But can intracranial stimulation electricity inside the brain
Speaker 1: provide brain boosting powers? H Yeah. There was a paper
Speaker 1: published by researchers from u c l A called Memory
Speaker 1: Enhancement and Deep Brain Stimulation of the interginal Area, and
Speaker 1: these researchers were working with a group of seven epilepsy
Speaker 1: patients who were already being fit within brain electrodes in
Speaker 1: an attempt to figure out where their seizures were coming
Speaker 1: from in order to isolate those areas for potential surgery. Okay,
Speaker 1: so so it's not like they were just cutting people
Speaker 1: skulls open, willy nilly. There there was a predetermined purpose
Speaker 1: for doing this, and they were like, well, while we're
Speaker 1: in there, hey, guys, since you already have these electrodes
Speaker 1: implanted in your brains, why don't you let us do
Speaker 1: this other thing that we think would be pretty neat. Uh. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so they used these electrodes to deliver electrical stimulation to
Speaker 1: this enter rhinal area, which is a brain bit that's
Speaker 1: been pinpointed as the first place that signs of Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: damage appears. Um. We think it's the primary gate of
Speaker 1: information about real time happenings into the hippocampus for further processing. Um. So.
Speaker 1: So the stimulation was given while the patients were playing
Speaker 1: a video game in which they had to navigate an
Speaker 1: unfamiliar city, and that stimulation actually seem to enhance their
Speaker 1: ability to have spatial learning, like improve their spatial learning.
Speaker 1: They were able to navigate the city more effectively than
Speaker 1: they would have otherwise, and in one case, it seemed
Speaker 1: to actually boost memory performance as well. Uh. They were
Speaker 1: very quick to say they can't be sure that methodology
Speaker 1: would work for everyone. These are this is a specific case.
Speaker 1: These are epilepsy patients, small sample as well. Um And
Speaker 1: so it's interesting, but nothing that you can draw any
Speaker 1: any firm conclusions about. It's just one of those things
Speaker 1: where you say, this is something we should look into further.
Speaker 1: If we have the opportunity to do so absolutely and
Speaker 1: not so much to bring this kind of technology into
Speaker 1: you know, your dorm room or our podcast research. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to go through any kind of
Speaker 1: neurosurgery in order to make a better podcast guys. But
Speaker 1: if this American life got an implants, well, I'm still
Speaker 1: putting all of my chips in the transcredial direct card
Speaker 1: stimulation camp. Uh No. Researchers are hoping to use this
Speaker 1: specifically for for eventually perhaps to you know, get a
Speaker 1: small implanted device in cases of patients with severe dementia
Speaker 1: to perhaps help them, you know, remember simple things like
Speaker 1: how to navigate their immediate environments, which I mean sounds
Speaker 1: very small, but for for those people is a very
Speaker 1: huge problem and would be a terrific relief, right, And
Speaker 1: we mentioned this in our last podcast, but we should
Speaker 1: mention it again. As exciting as these results are for
Speaker 1: possible future applications of making you know, typical or healthy
Speaker 1: people able to improve their performance, it's even more important
Speaker 1: when talking about the ability to offset damage what's happened
Speaker 1: to the brain through injury or disease, And that's the
Speaker 1: real life changing kind of thing. I mean, it would
Speaker 1: be very cool if we could all become a little
Speaker 1: bit smarter. But if you can help somebody who's lost
Speaker 1: cognitive function regain it, that's a really big deal. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: But Joe, I have a question for you. Yea, why
Speaker 1: would you ever put a monkey on cocaine? Because it's excellent?
Speaker 1: Would you would you prefer would you like to perhaps elaborate, Joe,
Speaker 1: or do you want to just leave it at that
Speaker 1: and we can conclude the episode. No, we want to
Speaker 1: talk about one more study that's also about internal stimulation
Speaker 1: brain implants. Yeah, that cocaine thing was not as much
Speaker 1: of a non sequitor as it sounded like. No, this
Speaker 1: this will bear on the study we're about to mention.
Speaker 1: So a team led by researchers at Wake Forest and
Speaker 1: the University of Southern California published a paper in two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve and the Journal of Neural Engineering, and it
Speaker 1: was called Facilitation and Restoration of cognitive function in Primate
Speaker 1: prefrontal cortex by a neuropros thesis that utilizes mini columns
Speaker 1: specific neural firing. So that's a long title. Is break
Speaker 1: that down for I listened to it on audio. That's
Speaker 1: what I took out the audiobook version of this paper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so here's what they did. The researchers took five Reesis
Speaker 1: Macoque monkeys and trained them to play a picture matching game,
Speaker 1: like over the course of two years. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: monkeys were shown an image. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: images were imagined. It's a picture of a carrot. I
Speaker 1: think it was like people in mountains and stuff. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, oh, okay, So people imagine it is
Speaker 1: a picture of Wayne Knight. Okay, okay, right, and then
Speaker 1: they're shown the picture for a second, and then Wayne
Speaker 1: Knight goes away, not on the screen anymore. It's obviously
Speaker 1: going to cause trauma. And he's an amazing you g
Speaker 1: a graduate went to the Governor's Honors program. Nice guy,
Speaker 1: as it turns out. Anyway, you're saying. Okay, Then the
Speaker 1: researchers would present the monkeys with a group of images,
Speaker 1: and the monkeys would have to select the image they
Speaker 1: had just seen previously from the group that appeared on
Speaker 1: the screen. So, after two years of training at the game,
Speaker 1: the monkeys got pretty good at it. They could pick
Speaker 1: the right image about three quarters of the time. About
Speaker 1: the time, so once the researchers got the monkeys to
Speaker 1: this point. They then implanted electrides into the monkey's brains
Speaker 1: with end points in two layers of the cerebral cortex
Speaker 1: that communicate with each other during the play of this
Speaker 1: sort of game. They recorded the monkey's brain waves during play,
Speaker 1: including the little electric buzzes that would happen during correct picks,
Speaker 1: sort of like Jonathan was talking about earlier with with
Speaker 1: that memory. Yeah, with the color game, right where they
Speaker 1: were in that case, they were hitting the spike whenever
Speaker 1: you hit whenever you made a mistake. This is slightly
Speaker 1: the other way, right, right, Yeah, they would they figured
Speaker 1: out what it looked like when a monkey made a
Speaker 1: correct choice and then would replay those buzzes while the
Speaker 1: monkeys were in the midst of trying to make a decision,
Speaker 1: and it improved their performance some like okay, yeah, so
Speaker 1: they were getting electrical stimulation that mirrored what had happened
Speaker 1: when they had gotten the right answer before. Then let's
Speaker 1: give the monkeys cocaine. Yeah, because if you dope a
Speaker 1: monkey with coke, its performance on games like this decreases,
Speaker 1: like from baseline, and they're going like, no, it's totally
Speaker 1: making me better, but it's not yet is hurting their
Speaker 1: performance as one would expect. Yeah, but also a coked
Speaker 1: up monkey with the electrical stimulation returns to baseline and
Speaker 1: can even do a little bit better than baseline. So
Speaker 1: the stimulation, the electrical stimulation seems to counteract the effects
Speaker 1: that the monkey would otherwise be experiencing under the influence
Speaker 1: of cocaine. Right, It counteracts the effects and then a
Speaker 1: little bit more, a little bit better. Yeah, So this
Speaker 1: again figures in on what we were just talking about.
Speaker 1: This is a really cool discovery for the idea of
Speaker 1: maybe being able to power up our brains in the future,
Speaker 1: but even more important for being able to replace lost
Speaker 1: cognitive ability in people with neurodegenerative diseases or with brain damage. Right,
Speaker 1: because in this case, it wasn't just you know, this
Speaker 1: kind of weird mad science let's give the monkeys cocaine thing.
Speaker 1: As much as I kind dismissed it early on, that's
Speaker 1: not how I really feel. The cocaine is kind of
Speaker 1: representing the sort of neurological damage one might have through
Speaker 1: any number of conditions or diseases, and this could potentially
Speaker 1: have a level of treatment to help people regain some
Speaker 1: function that they may have lost. Well, I think it's
Speaker 1: a fascinating finding. So at the end of this podcast, now,
Speaker 1: I think this is one of the weird cases where
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to say, Yeah, this crazy sounding thing
Speaker 1: improving our brains with technology, this is actually very within
Speaker 1: the realm of possibilities, super valid. I mean today years
Speaker 1: right today, we we don't want to encourage everybody to
Speaker 1: rush off and get you know, direct current stimulation kids
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. I'd say exercise caution in the
Speaker 1: early years of this research. We should hold back and
Speaker 1: wait to find out more about these processes before we
Speaker 1: just submit our brains to the vicissitudes of electricity and
Speaker 1: magnets and all the crazy stuff smart people want to
Speaker 1: do to you. Yes, let's let's check in with those
Speaker 1: monkeys in another five years and see how they're doing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wanted to kind of conclude this with a statement
Speaker 1: that the Dr Stephen Novella made. I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of Dr Novella. He's a neurologist and he's also one
Speaker 1: of the hosts to The Skeptics Guide to the Universe,
Speaker 1: which is a great show if you've never checked it out.
Speaker 1: It's it's really cool. They look at critical thinking and
Speaker 1: science and it's very entertaining show. But Dr Novella had
Speaker 1: this to say about boosting brain power, which was, beware
Speaker 1: simple answers to complex problems or easy methods for accomplishing
Speaker 1: difficult goals. But you know, essentially again another way of saying,
Speaker 1: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Speaker 1: Or maybe we just don't know enough about it for
Speaker 1: us to say this is in fact absolutely true and
Speaker 1: it will work for you. That's just it's a that's
Speaker 1: a statement that we cannot make with confidence. It may
Speaker 1: turn out to be true, but we can't confidently state
Speaker 1: that because we just don't know enough yet. But the
Speaker 1: cool thing is will continue to learn. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: going to be as a as a species constantly investigating
Speaker 1: and learning more and finding out what things might help
Speaker 1: people who otherwise are in really tough, tough positions due
Speaker 1: to some sort of condition or disease they might have.
Speaker 1: Or we might even see a future where our kids
Speaker 1: go to school and they put on their little trends
Speaker 1: cranial thinking caps and they study and they're more effective
Speaker 1: at doing it. We don't know yet, or I mean
Speaker 1: not to be flipped. They actually get a few surgeries
Speaker 1: and have some brain implants that really make a significant
Speaker 1: difference in their lives. I mean, people might actually go
Speaker 1: down that path. I wouldn't rule it out. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: that's certainly a future that is quite a ways off
Speaker 1: if it does in fact ever come to fruition. But uh,
Speaker 1: I hope to be around to see how this develops
Speaker 1: over the next few years, and maybe I'll be having
Speaker 1: my brain so that I can bring even better podcasts
Speaker 1: in the future, and we'll be trying to talk him
Speaker 1: out of it or or egging me on. Come on, guys,
Speaker 1: you know you'd be like, I want to see what
Speaker 1: happens when you pushes a button. Uh So, anyway, guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for future episodes of forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: maybe there's something about the future you've always been curious about,
Speaker 1: and you would love us to really take a deep
Speaker 1: look in it and and report back what we find.
Speaker 1: You should let us know. Send us a message on
Speaker 1: Twitter or Facebook or Google Plus or handle it. All
Speaker 1: three is FW thinking. We look forward to hearing from you,
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