Vaniver comments on DIY Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation. Who wants to go first? - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Dustin 14 March 2012 04:58PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (35)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Vaniver 14 March 2012 11:51:26PM 2 points [-]

That would be it.

One of the other things, that I haven't seen discussed much but seems to be going on, is that TCDS works by altering local ion concentrations. But those ions have to come from somewhere- and so it may be that TCDS lowers action potentials in one part of your brain but raises them elsewhere. (Brains are big, though, and so it seems plausible the effects elsewhere would be tiny. Ions would also be small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier, so many they just get pulled out of your bloodstream? It's times like this that I wish I had taken more biology.)

After watching the video, though, I'm much less pessimistic about electrode placement (or size- it looks like ours were reasonable).

Comment author: whpearson 15 March 2012 11:32:30AM 1 point [-]

Neurons near the cathode a depressed. Read this