tDCS clinical research – highlights: Cognitive Enhancement | Neurolectrics

Neurolectrics (Starstim device) published a white paper (pdf) in October 2013 that nicely collects pretty much all we know to date about tDCS and cognitive enhancement. I was reminded of this while visiting their montages page on their new wiki. Quoted is from the Chi / Snyder 9 Dot study (pdf).

Brain stimulation enables the solution of an inherently difficult problem – Certain problems are inherently difficult for the normal human mind. Yet paradoxically they can be effortless for those with an unusual mind. We discovered that an atypical protocol for non-invasive brain stimulation enabled the solution of a problem that was previously unsolvable.The majority of studies over the last century find that no participants can solve the nine-dot problem – a fact we confirmed. But with 10 min of right lateralising tDCS, more than 40% of participants did so. Specifically, whereas no participant solved this extremely difficult problem before stimulation or with sham stimulation, 14 out of 33 participants did so with cathodal stimulation of the left anterior temporal lobe together with anodal stimulation of the right anterior temporal lobe. This finding suggests that our stimulation paradigm might be helpful for mitigating cognitive biases or dealing with a broader class of tasks that, although deceptively simple, are nonetheless extremely difficult due to our cognitive makeup

via NEWP302305-WhitePaperClinicalEvaluationCogEnh – NEWP302305-WhitePaperClinicalEvaluationCogEnh.pdf.

5 thoughts on “tDCS clinical research – highlights: Cognitive Enhancement | Neurolectrics

    • I haven’t. You could try asking on the sub/Reddit, or you might try emailing Dave Sievert at MindAlive.com. I double checked a video of his that outlines various montages, and while it does include things I haven’t seen elsewhere, he doesn’t mention anything related to sleep.

    • The post is quoting from a paper, which happens to come from an Australian researcher, for whom lateralising would be the proper spelling I believe. It may suggest that tDCS is causing a thought process that would normally be taken care of by a left portion of the brain, to be handled by a right portion of the brain. As I’ve said elsewhere, I personally have yet to try tDCS, reason being that I haven’t come up with a clear way to measure results. I don’t want to ‘feel like it’s doing something’, I want to measure the difference.

      • Thank you for clarifying. And as for the joke about spellchecking I was talking about how words got mushed together, which actually seems to have been fixed up. Or maybe my browser just loaded it wrong, hm.

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