A 9V Battery To Your Brain Can Improve Your Gaming 167
autospa writes with an intriguing story found at Nature about direct electrical stimulation's effect on the brain. By applying low levels of electrical current to different parts of the brain via electrodes placed on the scalp, University of New Mexico researchers claim to have documented some significant changes in brain activity, which vary depending on the part of the brain targeted. Gamers, take note: in one experiment in which volunteers were recorded while playing a video war game, "those receiving 2 milliamps to the scalp (about one-five-hundredth the amount drawn by a 100-watt light bulb) showed twice as much improvement in the game after a short amount of training as those receiving one-twentieth the amount of current." The idea of affecting the brain by electric stimulation isn't new; but the battery-powered, non-invasive variety naturally leads some people to consider rolling their own.
Not just for gaming (Score:4, Interesting)
Sod computer gaming. My first through when reading this was "can I fit it inside my race helmet and improve my performance in real life?"
Obligatory Ringworld reference (Score:5, Interesting)
http://wireheading.com/wirehead.html [wireheading.com]
Re:It's all fun (Score:3, Interesting)
Good point. I don't think we understand enough about the electrical operation of the brain to be jumping for this. If I had to make a comparison, we can turn up the clock rate on an oscillator, but it doesn't mean that the device relying on the clock can handle it without some strange, sudden and premature failure.