Not sure if ultrasound stimulation of the human brain is really in the realm of hobbyists, but there is a DIY transcranial direct current stimulation scene (DIYTDCSS): https://old.reddit.com/r/tDCS/
Wow, that explains a lot. One trip I went on there was a older man, bald but otherwise extremely clean cut, the sort to wear slacks, loafers, and a dress shirt tucked in - casually, and quite healthy looking. He almost had a sort of super villain type appearance, somehow.
Anyhow, he had a fairly large briefcase type device he carried everywhere with him and was trying to convince everybody to come try his 'electric brain stimulation.' Surprisingly, nobody seemed too interested in going into a hotel room with a stranger to get their brains plugged into the wall. He seemed to have zapped away all inhibitions, and common sense. Sure made for an interesting character though!
The wetware devices (like the hobby EEGs) of the early internet made it a point to never be plugged in to mains..
There's a bit of a correlation causation issue with understanding these studies of one. It seems quite possible that they zap away inhibitions, but equally likely that one has reduced inhibitions if one is inclined to solder things together and push them against one's skull to see what happens.
This was a crazy discovery for me. The main two consumer groups of brain-tech users are a) new-age psuedoscience spas like the Berkeley Brain Spa that buy old equipment and show you pretty graphs, and b) terminally online people melting their brains for vague IQ benefits
not remotely medical advice; talk to your psych if it's suitable for you, but TMS is similar and FDA approved for depression, if you're able to access that. TDCS is more accessible if you're wanting to try something out at home.
Yes, but I think the near future is sensing: the risks are too great and the laws too complex to treat modulation seriously this decade, IMO. Sensing, on the other hand, is suddenly possible. Once the army of devs that implemented a billion GPT+PDF clones get wind that mind reading is now possible, it’s going to be a tech frenzy like we’ve never seen. IMO
Would this be useful for learning new languages as an adult? I have wondered if intelligence agencies used methods for heightening neuroplasticity in order to allow adult agents-in-training to be able to achieve near-native fluency in new languages. Of course, there are probably some behavioral changes they would seek to make while their trainees were especially neuroplastic...
I wonder this has applications for brain degeneration in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and MS.
Anything improving neuroplasticity could be great additions to the treatments for these diseases. I’d like to see more of this get out there and approved.
I would have expected a sham-treatment arm to the experiment, because how do you differentiate between "an intervention 30 minutes beforehand caused improved learning" and "our specific intervention 30 minutes beforehand caused improved learning."
You mean... Kind of like living? Are you the same now as you were a year ago? I find it scarier to think that my personality might become static! Plasticity is the ability to learn new things.
Well, no, and that's the point! It's not like living, it's an alteration to the natural course of life. Whether it's without negative consequences or not remains to be seen.
This is kinda the nature of life. I struggled with depression until my mid-late 20s. At 35, my high school years seem like a blur - my college years are starting to feel the same. I'm pretty ok with this.
Eh, I’d always know who I am as a person… and who I was holds little value, frankly, because the past is the past. And it’s not like I’ve ever had a ton of control over my personality. I didn’t decide to be a pedantic nerd. I didn’t decide to have ADHD. I didn’t decide much about myself at all, really. I’ve simply gone along and gotten along. Also, “We’ve always done it this way” isn’t always useful.
It honestly sounds like a great recipe to being even more open-minded, avoiding zealotry and overly-conservative stick-in-the-mud-ness. What’s not to love?
Not gonna lie, I’d probably sign up for a clinical trial of this procedure, just to experience it. But the risk of something going wrong is significant.
Who you are today likely isn’t who you were 15 years ago. And likely won’t be who you are in 15 years.
But I imagine you’re thinking significant changes where you’re an entirely different person, and I’m thinking just the gradual change we see in everyone. …except my dad. You could set your watch based on the tempo of his mood.
Correct. The HN community regards it as the high-order bit whether a study was conducted in humans or not. This has evolved into a de facto convention or, if you like, standard over the years.
Thanks!
The bulk of the cost is using OpenAI’s text-to-speech API, which is $0.015 per 1,000 characters. Oration generates both a full and summarized audiobook as well.
So far, I’ve found that service to provide a really good price and quality level, compared to offerings from AWS, Azure and other vendors.
If you happen to be an iOS user, give the app a try! (https://oration.app)
The iOS app is completely free for the time being, so we can focus on really giving our users a great experience. Eventually, I plan to introduce some paid plans but will keep a generous free tier.
They literally already sell this for penis "function" (health? performance?) in a service called Gainswave. Most people call it a gimmick. But if science has determined you can create brain plasticity with it then surely there's some merit downstairs.
You are confusing two different things. Both use low power ultrasound but the mechanisms of action are quite different. The first is meant to increase blood flow by breaking up deposits, etc. The second induces lipid streaming and pores in the membrane of neurons triggering action potentials.
