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Accord­ing to the adver­tis­ing hype, you too can enjoy incred­i­ble neur­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits in the com­fort of your own home by using a sim­ple elec­tri­cal device that offers tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS). For instance, three dif­fer­ent mod­els of tDCS devices sold online claim to improve mood, increase cre­ativ­i­ty, enhance mem­o­ry, accel­er­ate learn­ing, and com­bat pain and depres­sion. For the low, low price of between $99 and $189.95, you get a com­pact hand­held device with easy-to-use con­trols and two elec­tri­cal leads that end in small sponges. These sponges are dipped into saline solu­tion to make them cur­rent-car­ry­ing elec­trodes, then placed against your head. The web­sites typ­i­cal­ly show the sponges locat­ed on either side of the fore­head, but point out that they need to be placed else­where on the skull to acti­vate dif­fer­ent parts of the brain, depend­ing on the desired out­come.

Wher­ev­er you place the sponges, when you switch on the unit, you’re pump­ing elec­tric cur­rent into your brain, although not very much.

Read the rest of this entry »

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For Ban­ner Health, one of the largest non-prof­it health sys­tem in the Unit­ed States, find­ing ways to make health care eas­i­er and bet­ter for our patients is at the root of every­thing we do. That’s why we are mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments into the dig­i­tal health and neu­rotech space, try­ing to answer some com­mon pain points.

Let me give you an exam­ple. Read the rest of this entry »

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The flight that brings space weight­less­ness to Earth (BBC Future):

“Five, four, three, two, one…”

Not many air­craft cap­tains give their pas­sen­gers a rock­et launch-style count­down before take-off, but this is no ordi­nary plane. For starters, every­one on board, apart from the crew, is a sci­en­tist and has passed a full med­ical check – includ­ing a heart assess­ment. This is not a trip for ner­vous fliers Read the rest of this entry »

Researchers grap­ple with the ethics of test­ing brain implants (Sci­ence):

“In 2003, neu­rol­o­gist Helen May­berg of Emory Uni­ver­si­ty in Atlanta began to test a bold, exper­i­men­tal treat­ment for peo­ple with severe depres­sion, which involved implant­i­ng met­al elec­trodes deep in the brain in a region called area 25. The ini­tial data were promis­ing; even­tu­al­ly, they con­vinced a device com­pa­ny, St. Jude Med­ical in Saint Paul, to spon­sor a 200-per­son clin­i­cal tri­al dubbed BROADEN.

This month, how­ev­er, Read the rest of this entry »

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Elec­tri­cal Stim­u­la­tion To Boost Mem­o­ry: Maybe It’s All In The Tim­ing (NPR):

“Peo­ple with a brain injury or demen­tia often strug­gle to remem­ber sim­ple things, like names or places. In research pub­lished Thurs­day in the jour­nal Cur­rent Biol­o­gy, sci­en­tists have shown it may be pos­si­ble to improve this sort of mem­o­ry using tiny puls­es of elec­tric­i­ty — if they’re prop­er­ly timed Read the rest of this entry »