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Radiolab

9-Volt Nirvana

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Natural Sciences, History, Documentary, Science, Society & Culture

4.644.5K Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2014

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Learn a new language faster than ever! Leave doubt in the dust! Be a better sniper! Could you do all that and more with just a zap to the noggin? Maybe. Sally Adee, an editor at New Scientist, was at a conference for DARPA - The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - when she heard about a way to speed up learning with something called trans-cranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). A couple years later, Sally found herself weilding an M4 assualt rifle, picking off enemy combatants with a battery wired to her temple. Of course, it was a simulation, but Sally's sniper skills made producer Soren Wheeler wonder what we should think of the world of brain stimulation.  In the last couple years, tDCS has been all over the news. Researchers claim that juicing the brain with just 2 milliamps (think 9-volt battery) can help with everything from learning languages, to quitting smoking, to overcoming depression. We bring Michael Weisend, neuroscientist at Wright State Research Institute, into the studio to tell us how it works (Bonus: you get to hear Jad get his brain zapped). Peter Reiner and Nick Fitz of the University of British Columbia help us think through the consequences of a world where anyone with 20 dollars and access to Radioshack can make their own brain zapper. And finally, Sally tells us about the unexpected after-effects of a day of super-charged sniper training and makes us wonder about world where you can order up a state of mind.   Special thanks for the music of Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra

Transcript

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0:00.0

Wait, you're listening?

0:02.6

Okay.

0:03.9

All right.

0:05.1

Okay.

0:06.5

All right.

0:08.0

You're listening to Radio Lab.

0:10.9

Radio Lab.

0:11.5

Shorts!

0:13.0

From W-N-Y-S-C.

0:16.2

See?

0:16.5

Yes.

0:18.0

And N-P-R.

0:20.2

This is Radio Lab, hey, I'm Chadabom-R. I'm Robert Kulwitch. I'm Soren Wheeler. And this. Electricity. All right. If you want to sit there, if you stick the phones on and start saying hello to someone. And I don't know. Can you hear anyone? I don't know. Can you hear anyone? Oh my God. So in. Hi. Thank you. Yes, I do. I do. This is Sally 80. She's a old friend of mine. How are you? We went to school together a long time ago. But these days, she's an editor. A new scientist in London. And the reason I called her into the studio is because of something that happened to her when she was working on a story for them. Yes, this was a story that I'd been chasing for years and years. Began for her. In 2007, at DARPA Tech. Which is a big gathering of, like, weapons developers and researchers. It's like 5,000 guys all, you know, looking like Agent Smith from the Matrix,

1:11.2

you know, looking at the latest war toys. Drones, bazookas. Anyway, at some point, she starts

1:16.4

talking to this woman. And she was telling me about her program, which was that they had figured

1:21.3

out how to apply sort of electrical current to the brain in order to accelerate the learning

1:26.9

process.

1:28.0

And I was like, no fucking shit.

1:31.5

So what Sally had stumbled into was something called TDCS,

1:34.7

stands for transcranial direct current stimulation.

1:38.2

The idea is you take a couple little electrodes,

1:40.9

you place them on your scalp,

...

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