You’re not gonna believe this one.
What if you could boost your brain by recharging it with electricity? According to the May 2016 issue of Smithsonian magazine, this could someday be a real possibility. And some of the research is being done locally at Wright-Patterson AFB.
The military application should be obvious. For example, imagine spending 12 hours a day, six days a week, looking at surveillance photos and trying to identify drone targets. It’s mind-numbing work, and the decisions are literally life and death. Yet performance can start to decline in as quickly as twenty minutes. If a little jolt of electricity to the the right spots in brain can restore concentration, it would be a huge advantage. For you technical types, the treatment is called transcranial direct-current stimulation, or tDCS.
Yet there is a long way to go and researchers are being extremely cautious. It’s a promising idea, but don’t expect to find brain-charging stations at the mall in the near future.
The complete article is on the internet at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-to-plug-in-your-brain. The artwork is by Daniel Hertzberg as pictured on the website.
