Brain Training’s Promise
Brain Training’s Promise
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The technology is called transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS. It’s a low voltage current -- just 2 milliamps -- that’s passed between two electrodes attached to the scalp. There’s some evidence tDCS may alter how the brain functions, affecting which brain chemicals are released and how neurons fire. Studies have shown it makes meditating easier by helping the brain ignore irrelevant information, for example -- and it may even improve a person’s performance when they play first-person-shooter video games.
It remains to be seen, though, whether tDCS, when combined with brain training, might move the needle on fluid intelligence.
What’s more, the risks of zapping the brain with electricity, even at such a low voltage, are also not well-understood. Some experts have cautioned that the technology might lead to seizures and mood changes.
Companies like foc.us and The Brain Stimulator offer tDCS home kits to anyone who wants to try them. Another company, called Thync, just announced that they’d raised $13 million to bring a tDCS device to consumers.
SharpBrains CEO Alvaro Fernandez says he isn’t surprised that so many people are rushing ahead of the science to adopt brain training technology.
“One big problem is the health care system,” he says. “In the U.S., cardiovascular health has made huge strides over the last 40 or 50 years. But everything from the neck up has been completely ignored.”
With diagnoses of mental disorders like ADHD and dementia rising, he thinks the demand for services that may help the brain will only increase.
“Many users feel like they’re not properly helped by health providers and they are stepping up and thinking, ‘How do we do things ourselves?’ because they don’t necessarily trust their health providers.”
But even Fernandez, who thinks the concept of brain fitness will one day be as common and as accepted as physical exercise, says the industry may be promising more to consumers than it can currently deliver.
“In principle, everyone can benefit from this, just like everyone can improve their physical fitness, but it has to be personalized and it has to be relevant to the individual, but we’re not there right now,” he says.
The Promise and Perils of Brain Training
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Technologies, Though Still Experimental, Are Already in Consumers' Hands continued...
The technology is called transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS. It’s a low voltage current -- just 2 milliamps -- that’s passed between two electrodes attached to the scalp. There’s some evidence tDCS may alter how the brain functions, affecting which brain chemicals are released and how neurons fire. Studies have shown it makes meditating easier by helping the brain ignore irrelevant information, for example -- and it may even improve a person’s performance when they play first-person-shooter video games.
It remains to be seen, though, whether tDCS, when combined with brain training, might move the needle on fluid intelligence.
What’s more, the risks of zapping the brain with electricity, even at such a low voltage, are also not well-understood. Some experts have cautioned that the technology might lead to seizures and mood changes.
Companies like foc.us and The Brain Stimulator offer tDCS home kits to anyone who wants to try them. Another company, called Thync, just announced that they’d raised $13 million to bring a tDCS device to consumers.
SharpBrains CEO Alvaro Fernandez says he isn’t surprised that so many people are rushing ahead of the science to adopt brain training technology.
“One big problem is the health care system,” he says. “In the U.S., cardiovascular health has made huge strides over the last 40 or 50 years. But everything from the neck up has been completely ignored.”
With diagnoses of mental disorders like ADHD and dementia rising, he thinks the demand for services that may help the brain will only increase.
“Many users feel like they’re not properly helped by health providers and they are stepping up and thinking, ‘How do we do things ourselves?’ because they don’t necessarily trust their health providers.”
But even Fernandez, who thinks the concept of brain fitness will one day be as common and as accepted as physical exercise, says the industry may be promising more to consumers than it can currently deliver.
“In principle, everyone can benefit from this, just like everyone can improve their physical fitness, but it has to be personalized and it has to be relevant to the individual, but we’re not there right now,” he says.
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