Would you hack your brain this way?

What do you do to be able to think better? Conventional wisdom, also backed up by evidence, show that good sleep, regular exercise, and keeping your mind active by for example, ehem, reading science columns, lead you to think better. Experience does change the structure and function of the brain. But what if none of these work for you or you find them boring, what else is available out there?

Well, every other corner in many major cities around the world has a coffee shop. I think that speaks a lot about how much we are relying on mental stimulation via brewed cups of coffee. Coffee is known to jolt many a “sleeping” brains. That is why a cup of coffee or any shot of caffeine (in tea and chocolate although in generally lesser extent) is precious when you have just woken up or struggling through work in the mid-afternoon low. There are also prescription drugs that regulate brain activity for those diagnosed with attention-related issues as well as performance enhancing drugs that Lance Armstrong knew, perhaps too much, about.

It is not a novel idea to find ways to hack into our own brains to improve it, but how far do we go with it? Lately, brain stimulation of the electrical kind has been written about and more, gadgets have been developed for this.  Some say that we should now seriously have discussions on this. I agree because for one, merchandising for this “brain aids” has gone far ahead of the science revealed behind the promise of these gadgets. And two, I want to know if we would ever reach a point where we can buy these gadgets wholesale to donate them to politicians and their conspirators, who could use a boost in mental processing, including those parts that regulate morality, specifically corruption. But for now, I would settle on some directions on the first concern.

One of these discussions has started in a fascinating way through the World Science Festival 2015 entitled ‘The Spark of Genius” . The panel consisted of neuroscientists Richard Haier and Michael Weisend and Bioethicist and law professor, Nita Farahany.

Weisend explained the different kinds of “external” stimulation being used now in studies like Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (TDCS) which applies mild electrical shocks to the brain and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) which sends electrical currents generated by the electromagnets, to the brain. TMS is now widely accepted in treating depression. He said that studies of TDCS have been applied in conditions where there are specific tasks that need to be performed such as identifying visual targets. In his studies, the performance of subjects, after stimulation, improved more than 200%.

However, Weisend was clear to say that no studies have been made yet that would guarantee that these gadgets are safe in the long term because no neuro-imaging studies of the brain before and after stimulation has been done long-term. Another limitation is that for now, the application of the patch is on the scalp which is covered with skin and any area on the skin will get irritated overtime if you apply electrode patches on it continuously. Towards a wider goal, he said that what needs to be developed is a gadget that would just stimulate the brain but would not leave the other organs untouched. I wonder how that could be done as “side effects” are a given in any intervention. Somehow, I keep thinking that the law of there’s-no-such-thing-as-a-free-lunch nags me.

Farahany, I think, drew a good perspective when she asked why this kind of hacking which takes the form of “doping” in sports is unethical and illegal, but would not be if we were to do it to improve our school grades or job performance. Do we draw a line between the resulting motor abilities and “school” or “work performance” tests when in fact they all are effects of brainwork – for which we use the same organ?

I like Haier’s piece when he showed the example of a chimp beating a human (and all other humans made to take the same test) in a working memory test. If zapping the brain would mean an increase in short-term memory abilities, would we be able to reach that chimp’s ability or is that where we are limited by our neurobiology?

We really have to talk about these things now because we cannot stop it with simple laws and moral preaching about what is natural.  The fuel of civilization are new ideas that push the boundaries. So Farahany was right in raising the “hot” issues such as how this could affect the responsibilities and authorities of parents over children, who may use these gadgets for their children who will later become adults and will be deeply and permanently affected by it?

Another is if these gadgets would add to our interconnectedness just as the internet facilitates this, what happens if our brains are hacked and with it, the unique signals that our brains make given certain brain activities? How safe and private could we keep our own neural signatures? There is no legal regimen yet for neural signatures.

Looking through a lens to the future where we get to easily use the gadget, I have a few wonderings. How different a person would I be if the stimulation stops after a long time? Would it just mean lower performance in certain tasks or would that significantly affect the signature I write in the world and the people I affect? Could there be another way to make the effect last without continued stimulation? If there would be and I think there would be, it will open up a whole new world again and with it, a whole new set of questions. – Rappler.com

(Images (1, 2) courtesy Shutterstock; Graphic by Alejandro Edoria.)