How to Plug in Your Brain

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.

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