Non-medicinal Cognition enhancement

Started by , May 21 2004 06:42 AM

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#1

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Posted 21 May 2004 - 06:42 AM

http://edition.cnn.c.../19/acd.00.html

SNYDER: Yes, well not shocking it. These are gentle magnetic pulses in the left temporal lobe that simulate sort of damage that you sometimes see with autistic savants.

COOPER: And you ask your participants to draw a picture of a dog before, during and after this procedure. On the left we're seeing the before. It's a rather primitive one as the process is going and even after the process. The one on the far right is after this process is over. It's a more accurate I guess representation of a dog.

SNYDER: Yes, what we find in almost all of our participants is they start off drawing sort of caricatures of animals and then after ten minutes or so of what we call transcranial magnetic stimulation, they start drawing much more naturalistically. Their style completely changes and then 45 minutes later most people have reverted back to their normal style that they started with.

It's fascinating how depressing activity in one part of the brain can lead to increased artistic and creative ability.

Exploring this idea further there are autistic savants who are mathematical geniuses but are severely socially impaired. My hypothesis is that depressing a certain region(s) of the brain using this magnetic pulse method may induce a compensating effect where other region(s) of the brain become more active. I've heard doctors make such conjectures before, in the case of both Alzeheimer's disease patients and autistic savants.

An old man with Alzeheimer's disease had a degenerating brain as a result of the brain plaque associated with that disease, for a brief period of a few months to a year he became a brilliant artist but regardless he was a person incapable of taking care of himself. The doctors believed that one part of his brain associated with creativity (or something of the sort I'm recalling from memory) was overcompensating for the other failing parts of the brain. The degeneration eventually degraded that ability as well and he lost his artistic skill for the most part and he went into cognitive oblivion.

Now I think that since Mr. Snyder was able to induce this brain dampening effect temporarily it might be possible to induce a higher logical/mathematical intelligence by depressing a certain region(s) of the brain using his method. This is obviously not an ideal state to remain in permanantly but this exploration of the cognition is something worth exploring nonetheless.

I have no medical experience and have not taken any courses in that field so I'm asking those with more experience/knowledge in this general area to input their opinion. Thanks.

#2 JonesGuy

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Posted 21 May 2004 - 07:23 PM

I recall an article on this that's maybe a year old. I was pretty excited about it, but I remember not really trusting the reporter. The scientist involved had a decent reputation, but colleagues didn't like the excited claims he was making.

It's neat to see this again, after all this time.

I'm still quite excited about it. In my mind, this is something (similar to computers, or laser eye surgery) which could become mass produced over time. Increased thought processes would be awesome. I just hope people don't foul it up!

#3

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Posted 23 May 2004 - 02:07 AM

The link I produced is a transcript of the week long series on the brain by Anderson Cooper's 360 show. I missed all of it unfortunately but reading some of the transcript was fascinating.

I'd love to explore this venue of reasearch, I know there are devices like CES devices which are used for various purposes. However I don't know if there is a specific commercial device in existance that depresses or disrupts activity in one part of the brain in favour of increased activity in another part.

#4 shpongled

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Posted 23 May 2004 - 11:39 AM

It's fascinating how depressing activity in one part of the brain can lead to increased artistic and creative ability.

In terms of enhancing creative/artisitic ability, psychedelic drugs are pretty much the number one way to go (it is not a coincidence that a large number of the greatest musicians in the last half a century have used psychedelics). Also, a study with autistic children found regular administration of LSD to greatly enhance social interaction and other variables.

#5

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Posted 23 May 2004 - 02:27 PM

http://www.centrefor...TSHOT/index.cfm

http://www.centrefor...niusMachine.pdf

The last pdf file is an article from NewScientist magazine with a much more detailed article on the TMS method of increasing creativity. The method is in fact quite crude, placing a large magnet to the scalp and disrupting the activity in roughly the area necessary to relieve us of our perceptional filter of the world and expand our creativity. He also discussed in little detail about a similar mechanism of damage or disruption of one part of the brain leading to mathematical genius.

He made one of his goals clear to allow the general public to temporarily tap into their inherent autistic savant like creativity. This article supports my hypothesis that if we could in some way disrupt parts of the brain, we could boost creativity and possibly mathematical/logical intelligence. The limitation of the TMS method is also that it can only penetrate 2cm into the brain, greatly limiting it's experimental value for disrupting deeper brain structures.

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Posted 24 May 2004 - 09:03 AM

http://www.ctv.ca/se...677484_79778346

This will air on TV in Canada soon. Basically this is a segment on Increasing intelligence and the disinfranchisement of those born with inherently lower intelligence than those gifted with higher intelligence. They also talk about using TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) to "increase brain power" which it technically does not do but the result may seem that way.

Regardless this is all very interesting, who knows what commercially available product, if any will result from TMS. Futhermore TMS, what seems to be a relatively easy way to augment perception and various intelligence may give "normal" people the temporary experience of lucid creativity or mathematical pattern finding genius.

#7

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Posted 25 May 2004 - 12:03 AM

http://www.ists.unibe.ch/sciam.pdf

Scientific American article on increasing Brain performance and TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation).

http://www.biomag.hus.fi/tms/

A website on TMS, it does not talk about using it specifically to improve various skills but more for a treatement to mental ailments such as depression.

I've learned also that TMS can not only mimick brain damage by dampening an area of the brain causing an increased perception or an increase in one form of intelligence, but it can also stimulate brain activity directly.

http://en.wikipedia....tic_stimulation

A fair summary of what TMS is and what's it's being researched for.

#8

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Posted 25 May 2004 - 12:13 AM

http://www.ncbi.nlm....trez/query.fcgi

I took a shot and search Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and found many results, here are the actual scientific abstracts of the studies. I cannot directly link to the search so you will have to type "Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation" and search manually.

#9

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Posted 25 May 2004 - 01:37 AM

Now now

how do you think I found those links in the first place?

#10

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Posted 25 May 2004 - 02:10 AM

Long story short:

I ordered some stuff from Smart nutrition expected arrival date: April 30th
That stuff arrived last week opened by customs as usual and delayed 3 weeks because of the inefficient mail system.

I ordered some stuff from Rizzer (Mike) with an expected arrival date: April 30th
Still hasn't arrived, today is monday but it's a holiday, now I think if it doesn't come this week it could be because:

1) customs has confiscated it and I will recieve a letter.. eventually
2) mail system in my area is shit, which it is, and it might be lost
3) there was a problem on Mike's side when shipping (I highly doubt that though)

I think Mike has offered a refund if for some reason I don't recieve it, but I'm going to hold off on that offer until I'm sure it's not coming.
It's far more likely that the problem is with the mail system or customs in my area and that angers me needlessly, *sigh*.

#11

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Posted 25 May 2004 - 02:16 AM

Smart nutrition stuff was capped, Aniracetam from Rizzer was in powder form.

#12

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Posted 25 May 2004 - 02:37 AM

Well Piracetam powder got through and that was 750g of the stuff. The aniracetam is only 30g, maybe next time I'll order it in pill form. The Aniracetam still could come though.

#13

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Posted 25 May 2004 - 03:15 AM

Piracetam looks more like a salt than a powder, however I heard the Aniracetam is very fine and may look like something ominous to the often confused customs people. I think I may order Aniracetam pills next, although I believe that powder is much more economical so I would like to avoid that route unless it's really necessary.

#14

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Posted 25 May 2004 - 04:36 AM

Well, well...

http://www.imminst.o...tic stimulation

As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it was just a hint of Snyder's work and its implications for the study of cognition. He has used TMS dozens of times on university students, measuring its effect on their ability to draw, to proofread and to perform difficult mathematical functions like identifying prime numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills. That Snyder was able to induce these remarkable feats in a controlled, repeatable experiment is more than just a great party trick; it's a breakthrough that may lead to a revolution in the way we understand the limits of our own intelligence -- and the functioning of the human brain in general.

It looks like this has been already discussed to an extent at the Brain-Computer Interfacing forum, further bolstering my theory that through some this crude TMS method one could temporarily tap into their own mathematical or creative genius.

edit: So maybe it isn't my theory, it's Mr. Snyder's theory.

Edited by cosmos, 25 May 2004 - 05:14 AM.

#15 ocsrazor

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Posted 25 May 2004 - 02:47 PM

Hi Cosmos,

Just a quick comment, I obviously was one of major posters on the BCI thread you linked. I think what Snyder has done is not increasing creativity, but increasing focused activity of very specific brain regions. People were likely able to draw better because they could remember the specific details of what they were drawing, this isn't a creativity increase though.

Creativity and focus are often very opposite processes in the brain. Inhibition is a very wide spread and general type of activity in brains, whereas excitation is usually a very local, specific type of activity. The creativity increases caused by certain mind altering drugs is probably caused by shutting down inhibition generally, but this will not make you better at pencil drawings if you don't already have the muscle memory for a specific type of illustration.

This is a very simplistic discussion of these processes, but as a neuroscientist, these are my initial thoughts on what is actually going on with Snyder's TMS experiments. This is not to say that this would not be useful, because selective focusing would be a very powerful ability to have as well, but I don't think this will alter creativity, which is more likely a loss of focus and getting areas in the brain to communicate which wouldn't normally do so.

Best,
Peter

#16

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Posted 25 May 2004 - 11:00 PM

My interest in his TMS experiment is not for creativity specifically but whether we can mimick austistic savant like mathematical genius, assuming the same process is going on where either one area is being suppressed or another excited. The notion as proposed by other neuroscientists was that autistic savants practice continually to become as good as they are, however I don't think mathematical genius savants fit in that category since you cannot practice to become a mathematic genius this skill is generally inherent. What's your view on this and do you believe that TMS could be used to directly or indirectly release these mathematical skills?