Scientists Discover How Tp upload Knowledge to Your Brain
March sixteen, 2017 (For week of March half dozen)
I was thinking to myself the other day: "hmm, I oasis't come beyond a really shitty news article about brain science recently, I wonder if science journalists in the neurosciences stepped upward their game afterwards feeling the force per unit area from my intensely pop blog posts about scientific discipline advice?"
Then, this gem dropped out of the sky into my lap (thank you Kelvin). Give information technology a read, it's worth it.
Are yous not entertained?
Patently, since I last popped my head up from working on some little bug in neuroscience, somebody had gone and figured out how to direct upload noesis to our brains! (I had to wait thrice to make sure that this wasn't the fucking Onion.)
"Whoa, I know Kung-Fu."
What journalists think scientists did:
So, what happened here? Well, commencement, according to this news article, "scientists" believe that we could presently feed knowledge directly into the brain Matrix-style, and researchers "claim" to take already adult a stimulator that tin can practise so. Uh…so which is it? Tin we already do it or will nosotros be able to do it soon? And who the hell are these scientists and researchers claiming that?
Okay, nevermind that. On the next line, nosotros larn that apparently information technology merely "amplifies" learning, and on a much smaller scale than seen in Matrix. This is Good Journalism 101: if your readers are not disappointed by the 3rd paragraph, you're not doing it right.
Just look! On the very Side by side line, it says that scientists "studied electric signals in the brain of a trained airplane pilot and fed the data into novice subjects…and improved their piloting abilities and learned the task 33% amend." The commodity goes on to conclude with some words like "neuro- plasticity" and "synergy of cognitive and motor functioning", and reminds united states that Egyptians used electric fish to stimulate the brain some 4000 years ago.
What I think the scientists did after reading this commodity:
So the article itself sends some confusing messages. In the best possible estimation (or is it the worst?), these scientists were able to direct upload the skills of flying a flying simulator into some novice brains. This is fucking groundbreaking! Why? This implies that we've broken the code with which the brain encodes information, such every bit concepts of altitude and speed, equally well as motor commands. Non just that, we can now upload that data straight and through digital means in a completely nonchalant way to random volunteers! Why the hell do nosotros still have training programs?!? This is literally Helm America: the Wintertime Soldier!
Okay, mayhap this optimal reading is a bit also literal (I mean literal as in I'm literally reading the words that are showing up on my screen.) Afterall, had that been true, this newspaper probably would've been in Nature AND Science in the same calendar week, not Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Null incorrect with Frontiers, I just don't typically see papers casually break the neural code there, that's all.
And then then, to be fair, this news article pares back and seems to inject a hint of actual scientific rigor. In this interpretation, scientists recorded brain signals from trained pilots and played them back into the novices' brains through an electric stimulator. Having adapted my expectations appropriately as such, I was actually pretty excited about this effect. The method itself is plausible enough: record voltage fluctuations on the scalp (EEG) of the professional, and play it back on the scalp of the novice, and manifestly it facilitates learning! This would also exist pretty groundbreaking (less sarcastically so) and it would ask many more questions than it would answer, such as: "why the hell should that work at all?" Everyone's EEG is pretty unique, and if playing that back onto someone else's brain helps them learn, it would mean that at that place are some invariant brain signatures that stand for sure skills or information in general. I can hardly contain my excitement at this signal. So I dig up the newspaper, and what did these folks do?
What the scientists really did:
"Sham or actual tDCS was applied with the Starstim arrangement (Neuroelectrics) following the finger tapping chore (run into Figure 1A). The total current applied was two mA, with scalp electric current density of 0.04 A/m2 for active tDCS (for 60 min), or 0.1 mA (0.002 A/m2) for sham tDCS (for one min)."
— Methods: tDCS. Choe et al., 2016
Fuck you lot, the Telegraph.
Addendum: I would've ended this bluster right there, but I retrieve my non- neuroscience friends wouldn't get the joke. Basically, tDCS is a method of brain stimulation, a very unsophisticated ane at that. tDCS stands for transcranial Direct Current Stimulation. Transcranial equally in through the head, and Direct Current as in…that'southward correct, direct current. Essentially, tDCS is connecting a (or many) ix Volt battery to your head such that a steady menstruation of electrons comes out of the battery and through your head. Information technology is every bit unexciting as you lot could possibly make encephalon stimulation to be (though it is literally shocking), and it certainly does not track the "recorded brain bespeak of the professional person pilot". I don't fifty-fifty know where this journalist person got that idea from. I re-read the Methods department like 4 times just to brand sure I didn't miss something that was super important, but nowhere in there (nor in the abstract & introduction) does information technology mention variable brain stimulation. As far as I can tell, the innovation in this study is the concurrent recording of brain signals with brain stimulation, and a more focal/ spatially precise manner of stimulating the brain, which is accomplished through a new fancy system. Other than that, the experiment is literally to compare the operation of those that were hooked upward to a battery during preparation versus those that weren't.
Addendum to the addendum: I honestly can't imagine how this news commodity could have come out and then incorrect. Information technology seems like the primary authors of the scientific newspaper are not at an academic institution, so maybe their PR team wasn't equipped with dealing with "science journalism". I cannot imagine what the authors must exist thinking right now, though I suppose there is no bad publicity, especially if people won't fifty-fifty realize this is bad publicity. For all I know, somebody could've read this and thought we tin can plug into the Matrix at present, and that's where I swoop in and salve the day from bad science journalism. Go me! Also, I realized I did not brand a comment on the actual scientific finding, which is that, equally unsophisticated equally zapping your encephalon with a (DC) battery is, it led to actual performance gains overall, as measured past some flying-landing metrics. I honestly don't know besides much here, only I will say that this finding falls squarely within a larger context of the contentious debate about whether tDCS actually does something to your brain, as summarized very nicely here.
So the accept-home message? Delight, for the love of god, don't become your science from the Telegraph.
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Source: http://www.rdgao.com/scientists-discover-how-to-upload-knowledge-to-your-brain/
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