Radiolab - 9-Volt Nirvana

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

Duration: 24m
Broadcast on: 26 Jun 2014
Audio Format: other

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

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So wait, you're listening to RadioLab, short from WNYC and NPR. This is RadioLab, I'm Jada Boomerad, I'm Robert Krillwich, I'm Soren Wheeler, and this. All right, if you want to sit there, just stick the phones on and start saying hello to someone, and I don't know, can you hear anyone? Can I hear anyone? I don't know, can you hear anyone? Oh my god, Soren, hi! Thank you. Yes, I do, I do. This is Sally Adi, she's an old friend of mine. How are you? We went to school together a long time ago, but these days she's an editor at 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. You're in 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 looking like Agent Smith from The Matrix, looking at the latest war toys. Trones, bazookas. Anyway, at some point she starts talking to this woman. And she was telling me about her program, which was that they had figured out how to apply sort of electrical current to the brain in order to accelerate the learning process. And I was like, "No f***ing s***." So what Sally had stumbled into was something called TDCS, stands for Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation. The idea is you take a couple little electrodes, you place them on your scalp, connected with wires to a battery, you send a little bit of electricity into your brain and then all kinds of things happen, if you believe the claims. For Sally, it started with a casual afternoon of sniper training. So after that conversation at the conference, she tracked down a group in Carlsbad, California. It's about an hour and a half south of LA. Who were using this brain-zapping stuff to train snipers. And I actually got new scientists to agree to send me to LA from London, which is not an insignificant expense. After a late night international flight and some LA traffic. I haven't slept. I'm sleep deprived. I found herself at a place called Advanced Brain Monitoring where they have a little room. This little room where they've set up a little sort of 360 degree training simulation. So it's kind of like a video game, but it's like the full room in front of you. Like a whole wall is a screen? Yes. Not only that, she says, but all around you in this room are these props. You're behind real sandbags, you know, in proper position, they teach you how to hold the rifle properly. And the rifle, except for the fact that it shoots blanks, is basically the real deal.

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