Mind Modifications

IEEE Spectrum Online points to interesting research lead by William J. Tyler. The research group used low-power, low-frequency (440 kHz to 670 kHz) ultrasound to stimulate areas within the brain.

This technique, called “ultrasonic neuromodulation“, works by toggling the sodium channels of a neuron, possibly triggering the release of neurotransmitters - in other words, making the neuron “fire”.

You can listen to Mr. Tyler explain it himself.

The technology is still in early stages and may yet develop towards interesting mass-market applications in a time-scale of 4-5 years. Maybe a similar technique could even be used to “read”, instead of just “write”.

Here is an interesting Nature journal article about cognitive-enhancing drugs and their current legal status.

The authors argue that even though there are risks involved, the overall benefits for the individuals and the society are greater, and thus use of cognition-enhancing drugs (for example Ritalin, Modafinil, Adderall, Aricept) should be allowed for use by healthy people even without a medical condition.

Read the entire article “Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy” here.

The site ended up at MetaFilter, and the resulting traffic influx killed the poor web server.

But now the server is up again - hello to all MetaFilter people, hope you enjoy your visit(s)!

The MetaFilter article pointed to a Mindhacks post about a very interesting research paper at Cortex volume 44. Unfortunately direct linking does not work so well, so head for Cortex, and look for “Ganzfeld-induced hallucinatory experience, its phenomenology and cerebral electrophysiology“.

I got mail from Emotiv pointing out that the Discovery Channel recently ran a feature about building a mind-controlled car, using the Emotiv EPOC gadget for brain-computer interface. If you are in the USA, have a look.

I would appreciate if you could post some comments, as I was unable to view the video - I’m in Europe and there’s some silly region control at Discovery channel (and the video was not yet up at Youtube).

Here are two mnemonic techniques which help memorize (sequential) lists. In principle, these two techniques are similar to the Loci system but really need the lists to be in sequence, whereas the Loci method is more “random access”.

Examples of sequential lists are shopping lists, task lists, equations, layers in a technical architecture (e.g. OSI), and so on - any list where the order is important.
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The placebo effect, in a nutshell, is demonstrated like this: instead of giving a patient real medicine, he is given ineffective medicine (e.g. sugar pills) but the patient is nevertheless cured. This is because the patient thinks he is receiving real medicine and “knows” that it should work - thus, although really given ineffective medicine, he cures himself through some form of self-suggestion.

BBC4 has now put both parts of their radio program about the placebo effect online.

Be sure to also check this post at Mind Hacks for links to a couple of interesting papers.

An interesting article about research which was done to help people with dyslexia. The brain can learn to permanently adapt to enhance the learning capabilities, as long as enough training and instruction are given (and the training carefully followed, of course). Check out “Remedial instruction rewires dyslexic brains, provides lasting results”.

Quote: “Focused instruction can help underperforming brain areas to increase their proficiency.”

Mindmapping is a technique where one iteratively draws a diagram with information, and links those pieces of information together with connections. It’s a very powerful technique which you can use when trying to tackle complex problem areas, such as new ideas, studying of new subjects, analysis of problems, organizing, writing, decision-making, etc.

This is a quick-and-dirty introduction how mindmaps work and how you can use them.
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The consumer-grade EEG device from OCZ, the “Neural Impulse Actuator”, has started shipping. It can be bought (although stock seems empty) at least from play.com, with the price being 100 UK pounds (I will not play along with silly 99.99 prices).

A review can be read at Overclock3D.net.

No word yet about support for non-Windows platforms.

An article about enhancing cognition (with the aid of chemicals) in the Economist.