Can we improve brain power?

This might be a little controversial, but in the interest of having an open mind, lets talk about …

Passing an external electrical current through your brain …

My interest was first piqued by an article in a Sydney newspaper about Professor Allan Snyder, director of the University of Sydney’s Centre for the Mind, who is working on what he refers to as a ‘thinking cap’, that “aims to promote creativity by passing low levels of electricity through the brain”:

  • The device consists of two conductors fastened to the head by a rubber strap
  • In a test (60 people was the sample size), participants took “a simple arithmetic test”
  • Three times as many people who wore the “thinking cap” were able to complete the test, compared with those who did not use it

Professor Snyder said the device had been in use by scientists for a decade, but this was the first study into how current passing through the brain could amplify insight.

  • Snyder added that “the science remained in its infancy”

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From there I started reading up on transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS): “low current delivered directly to a part or parts of the brain via small electrodes”

There is quite a bit of information around this, some of it in the academic literature, some of it in popular publications.

This from the BBC:

  • Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation … originally developed to help patients suffering from brain injuries … tests in healthy adults show it can also be used to enhance overall cognitive performance. Depending on which part of the brain is stimulated TDCS can be used to improve language and maths ability, problem solving, attention span, memory and even movement and coordination.

In Scientific American:

  • One of the most difficult tasks to teach Air Force pilots who guide unmanned attack drones is how to pick out targets in complex radar images … So Air Force researchers were delighted recently to learn that they could cut training time in half by delivering a mild electrical current (two milliamperes of direct current for 30 minutes) to pilot’s brains during training sessions on video simulators … so-called transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) … The question for the Air Force and others interested in transcranial stimulation is whether these findings will hold up over time or will land in the dustbin of pseudoscience.

There seems to be plenty of work still to be done, but research is progressing:

There’s another article here (warning … this article is a bit over-the-top in enthusiasm).

As noted several times, there is still much research to be done.

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But what of trading performance? Can using something like tDCS help improve that? I can imagine very short-term traders, such as scalpers, might see some potential benefit in focus, pattern recognition and so on. (Oh, and sticking electrodes on your head when scalping …surely there’s gotta be a pun in there somewhere?)

So, what do ForexLive participants say? Comments welcome …