[Neuro] tDCS at Noisebridge?

Thu Apr 25 01:12:04 UTC 2013

I just started following this thread so I don't know if this has been discussed yet ($99 tDCS unit):

http://flowstateengaged.com/

Here is another fellow that has been experimenting with tDCS and posting his results:

http://transcranial-direct-current.blogspot.co.nz/

________________________________________
From: neuro-bounces at lists.noisebridge.net [neuro-bounces at lists.noisebridge.net] on behalf of Anthony Di Franco [di.franco at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 8:37 PM
To: John Withers; Rohan Dixit; Santhi Elayaperumal
Cc: neuro at lists.noisebridge.net
Subject: Re: [Neuro] tDCS at Noisebridge?

Results:

Santhi, Rohan, and I met up at sudo room last night alongside the microcontroller hack night.
I passed parts to Santhi and Rohan and after some preliminary looking over my device and noting how to replicate it and what the pitfalls are or might have been a year ago when I made it we moved on to basic testing of mine. Wasted several minutes being vexed by current flow notational conventions.
We are planning to meet again at sudo room next Tuesday evening and maybe make this a regular or semi-regular thing.

Testing:
No scientific discipline whatsoever was involved and goal was to verify basic function when hooked to a body through wet sponges in a non-lethality sense more than anything else.
Trial 1:
Put an anodic wet sponge somewhere on my forehead and an alligator clip on my tongue. Turned the dial up from zero to blinking lights, then down a bit. Subjective effects clearly noticeable but simultaneously subtle and hard to describe. Aborted due to difficulty speaking with alligator clip on tongue and æsthetic concerns around saliva in alligator clip's rubber boot.
Trial 2:
Replaced alligator clip on tongue with alligator clip on wet sponge on left shoulder. Otherwise same. Total stimulation time 20 minutes. Subjective perception of time slightly sped up for first 3.5 minutes, slowed down for most of rest of stimulation. Slight dissociation and euphoria during stimulation. Less dissociation and somewhat more euphoria and feeling of clear perception afterwards for about 1.5 hours. Or maybe that was the sake, which was imbibed in small quantity a few minutes after end of stimulation, but does not usually affect me in any way at all like that.
Trial 3:
About 2 hours after start of trial 2. Same protocol. Measured current with ammeter in series and found 2.1mA regulated maximum through meter becomes about 3mA maximum with head and shoulder load also in circuit, which is quite counterintuitive. Settled on 2.5mA, 15 minutes of stimulation. Little subjective change during stimulation. Slight fatigue afterwards for about 20 minutes followed by about 1.5 hours of euphoria and feeling of clear perception.
I slept well last night, which is usual, but fell asleep about an hour earlier than usual, and awoke about 45 minutes earlier than usual, feeling more alert than usual. Today, I feel not noticeably different from usual.

Next time, will try not to drink as much sake and maybe do a cognitive function test, or something.

Rohan also tried the thing, but I will leave his write up to him.

On Apr 18, 2013 2:07 AM, "John Withers" <jwithers at reddagger.org<mailto:jwithers at reddagger.org>> wrote:
On 04/17/2013 06:17 PM, Anthony Di Franco wrote:

More to the point then, what's the best prior info right now on how to aim these things?

Two places, one is the paper that Robert posted to, the 2008 State of the Art paper. The other is this slightly badass display of insane citing:
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27418725/tDCS%20Abstracts%20-%20July%202011.pdf

Note that neither one of these are going to be very user friendly. Some abstracts won't give locations. All of them are going to use terms that are going to be challenging if you aren't fully up to speed on brain anatomy and the 10-20 system.

You can find out the rudiments of the 10-20 system on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-20_system_%28EEG%29

The other thing you want to know is anode or anodal means positive terminal and cathode or cathodal means negative terminal. If they say Anodal to the DLPFC and don't say anything about the cathode, it is probably on the shoulder and likely whichever one they don't mention, which might be referred to generically as the "return" electrode, is larger than 2" x 2", which is common when placing it off the head.

As for DLFPC and that, you can easily find where the hell they are talking about with google.

If all that is a bit more daunting than you are down for, you can screw about with these montages for fun until I get something a bit more comprehensive up:

Go near the bottom of this page and you can see a set of montages:
http://www.getlimitless.com/Home/tabid/114/post/Build-a-tDCS-Device/Default.aspx

There are a few montages here with good labels about what they supposedly do:
http://www.medgadget.com/2011/04/darpa_study_uses_video_game_to_research_tdcs_finds_more_amps_mean_more_frags.html

Sorry if any of that was condescending and you already know this stuff. Without knowing you, I threw in some basic stuff.

j
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