9-Volt Nirvana

Summary

---

Radiolab – "9-Volt Nirvana" (June 26, 2014)

Overview

This Radiolab episode, hosted by Jad Abumrad, Robert Krulwich, and Soren Wheeler, investigates transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)—a method of using mild electrical currents to the brain purportedly to accelerate learning, enhance performance, and even induce a "flow state." The story is framed by science journalist Sally Ady's firsthand experience as both a subject and investigator. The show probes the science, the military applications, the burgeoning DIY community, lingering uncertainties, and the strange allure of brain-zapping technology.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to tDCS and Sally Ady’s Assignment

• Sally Ady, a London-based editor for New Scientist, recounts how her curiosity was piqued at DARPA Tech, a conference of defense researchers.
• She encountered a program claiming to speed up learning by applying electrical current to the brain.
  • “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.” (Sally Ady, 02:34)
• This led Sally to join a sniper training simulation in Carlsbad, California, where tDCS was being tested.

---

2. The Sniper Simulation: Sally’s Experiment with tDCS

• The training mimics real-life situations (virtual enemies, situational pressure).
• Sally performs poorly under pressure, feeling overwhelmed, jetlagged, and anxious.
  • “And then from all over the place, dozens of people in suicide bomb vests start running at you... I can't make the decisions fast enough.” (Sally Ady, 04:42)
• Neuroscientist Mike Weisend, who leads the tDCS experiments, introduces the device: basic electrodes, a battery, and a simple circuit.
  • “So this is a big red toolbox that we got literally from Sears.” (Mike Wisen, 05:56)
• Sally receives stimulation (one electrode on her right temple, one on her left arm). She describes the sensation as metallic, “like I had licked the inside of an aluminum can.” (Sally Ady, 06:28)
• With tDCS on, Sally’s experience of time and task changes dramatically.
  • “She’s like, no, no, no, that was 20 minutes. Like, no, that’s not true... the clocks have all shifted by 20 minutes, and I swear to God, it was three minutes.” (Sally Ady, 07:07)
• Her performance switches from failing (3/20 hits) to perfect (20/20), and Sally feels “in the zone,” or in a state of flow.

---

3. How Does tDCS Work? (08:03–11:13)

• Mike Weisend explains the theory: early in learning, the brain tries several neural patterns; tDCS helps the “right” circuit fire and stick.
  • “We can double the rate of learning.” (Mike Wisen, 08:34)
  • “This is not a scalpel. This is a sledgehammer.” (Mike Wisen, 10:15)
• The tool is not precise—stimulating millions of neurons at once. But, by targeting specific brain regions (e.g., right side for spatial tasks, left for language), performance in targeted domains can improve.

---

4. Live Studio Test: Can Jad Be “Juiced Up”? (11:13–14:47)

• Mike brings his tDCS kit to the studio. Jad volunteers for a test.
• Before the current, Jad struggles to see hidden images in stereograms (3D pictures).
• With tDCS applied (“feels like a bunch of mosquitoes are biting me in my temple”), Jad experiences a sudden improvement:
  • “They’re coming out really fast... This is awesome. Coiled snake.” (Jad Abumrad, 14:15)
  • “I was like—you couldn't give them to me fast enough... Maybe that’s a flow state like you were describing.” (Jad Abumrad, 14:23)
• Jad and the hosts note uncertainties: placebo effect, adrenaline, and the need for controlled studies.

---

5. The Scientific View: Promise, Caveats, Dangers (15:09–16:56)

• Soren contacts Peter Reiner, neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia, for a reality check.
• Reiner notes genuine interest in the research, says tDCS "appears to be relatively effective," but cautions:
  • “Pretty much all of the studies that have been done to date are relatively small.” (Peter Reiner, 15:42)
• Most studies involve only 20–50 people; positive effects are promising, but not conclusive.

---

6. The DIY tDCS Movement—and Risks (16:28–18:45)

• YouTube is flooded with DIY instructions for making and using tDCS devices ("for around $20").
  • “Since I don’t have any solder with me... YouTube just seems to be filled with people who are trying to hotwire their own brain.” (Soren Wheeler, 16:49–16:56)
• Some users claim cognitive boosts; others report side effects—burns, temporary blindness, mood swings.
  • “After about five minutes, I felt really, like really angry and depressed...” (DIY user, 18:17)

---

7. The Brain as an Ecosystem: Ethical & Safety Concerns (18:45–19:41)

• Reiner warns this technology is hard to regulate, as device placement changes effects.
  • “Every part affects every other part in some way.” (Peter Reiner, 19:03)
  • tDCS’s impact can propagate throughout the nervous system, not just local brain regions.
  • The “zero sum theory”: enhancing one brain area may dampen another.

---

8. Aftereffects and Psychological Impact (19:41–22:03)

• Sally describes a surprising after-effect: post-experiment, she felt calm, anxiety-free, and unusually focused for “a couple of days.”
  • “The little angry gnomes in my head... they were just completely turned off, I think, for a couple of days.” (Sally Ady, 21:25)
  • “It was like somebody had wiped a really steamy window, and I was just able to look at the world for what it was.” (Sally Ady, 21:56)

---

9. Deeper Questions: Flow, Creativity, and the Nature of Control (22:03–24:33)

• The hosts consider whether shutting out one’s own self-doubts and anxieties is part of what makes for optimal performance.
• They debate the effect of being able to “order up” flow states or creativity on-demand.
  • Soren: “That’s a world that’s empty of true gratitude.” (24:25)

---

10. The Allure and the Risk of “Brain Juicing” (24:33–25:14)

• Sally admits she craved another session, likening the experience to a drug.
  • “It felt like a drug with no side effect. I mean, I don't know if I'm gonna get addicted to electricity. Seems unlikely...” (Sally Ady, 24:33)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the sensation of tDCS:
  • “It wasn’t so much that I suddenly tasted metal in my mouth. It tasted like I had licked the inside of an aluminum can.” (Sally Ady, 06:28)
• On performance improvement:
  • “When Sally did it with brain stimulation, she performed at 100% accuracy.” (Mike Wisen, 07:44)
  • “She went from being, like, totally inept to, like, a trained killer?” (Jad Abumrad, 08:03)
• On the risk of DIY:
  • “There's some people that report loss of consciousness after using it. There are some people that are reporting feeling burns. There's actually one report of somebody going temporarily blind.” (Nick Fitz quoting, 17:44–18:08)
• On anxiety relief:
  • “They were just completely turned off, I think, for a couple of days... It was like somebody had wiped a really steamy window, and I was just able to look at the world for what it was.” (Sally Ady, 21:25–21:56)
• On craving the experience:
  • “One of the really worrying things to me was afterward how much I craved doing it again.” (Sally Ady, 24:33)

---

Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:34 | Sally encounters tDCS at DARPA Tech | | 03:54 | Sally describes intense sniper simulation | | 05:54 | Introduction of neuroscientist Mike Weisend and his tDCS device | | 07:07 | Sally experiences time distortion and flow state during tDCS | | 08:34 | Weisend claims tDCS can “double the rate of learning” | | 10:15 | “This is not a scalpel. This is a sledgehammer.” | | 11:13–14:23| Jad tries tDCS live in studio, reports “state of flow” | | 15:28 | Scientist Peter Reiner on research limitations and small studies | | 16:28 | Exploration of the DIY tDCS community and safety concerns | | 18:45 | Risks of unintended effects—brain as an interconnected ecosystem | | 21:25 | Sally’s account of anxiety disappearance “for a couple of days” | | 24:33 | Sally likens the experience to a drug, expresses desire to repeat |

---

Conclusion

"9-Volt Nirvana" presents tDCS as a tantalizing interface between neuroscience, military applications, self-improvement, and even mood alteration. The episode captures the excitement, skepticism, and ambivalent ethics surrounding this technology. The personal stories and expert commentary bring the promise and peril of “brain juicing” into sharp relief: it might be possible to hack ourselves into better performance and blissful calm, but that path is rife with unknowns about efficacy, safety, and what it means for our sense of self.

---

Transcript

[Sally Ady]

Hey, Fidelity, what's it cost to invest with the Fidelity app?

[Jad Abumrad]

Start with as little as $1 with.

[Soren Wheeler]

No account fees or trade commissions on US stocks and ETFs.

[Sally Ady]

Hmm, that's music to my ears.

[Soren Wheeler]

I can only talk. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. 0 account fees applied to retail brokerage accounts only. Sell order assessment fee not included. A limited number of ETFs are subject to a transaction based service fee of $100. See full list of Fidelity.com commissions. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC. Member NYSE SIPC.

[Jad Abumrad]

If your small business is booming, you.

[Sally Ady]

Might say cha ching.

[Jad Abumrad]

But you should say, like a good.

[State Farm / Fidelity Ad Voice]

Neighbor, State Farm is there and we'll.

[Jad Abumrad]

Help your growing business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

[State Farm / Fidelity Ad Voice]

Get ready to shop Lowe's Black Friday doorbuster deals to save $150 on a 30 inch blackstone griddle. Now $299 plus choose a whirlpool top load washer or Midea top freezer refri for just $398. These limited time doorbuster deals go fast, so get holiday ready. Today at Lowe's, we help you save valid 1128 through 12. One selection varies by location while supplies last. See Lowes.com for more details.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wait, you're listening.

[Sally Ady]

Okay.

[Soren Wheeler]

All right.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay.

[Soren Wheeler]

All right. You're listening.

[Jad Abumrad]

Listening to Radiolabs Lab.

[State Farm / Fidelity Ad Voice]

Radio Lab.

[Soren Wheeler]

Short from wny.

[Jad Abumrad]

See?

[Sally Ady]

Yes, and npr.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Soren Wheeler]

I'm Soren Wheeler. And this electricity.

[Robert Krulwich]

Right? If you want to sit there, okay. If you stick the phones on and start saying hello to someone and I don't know, can you hear anyone?

[Sally Ady]

Can I hear anyone?

[Soren Wheeler]

I don't know, can me?

[Sally Ady]

You hear? Oh, my God. Soren.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hi.

[Robert Krulwich]

So you know these places?

[Sally Ady]

Thank you.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes, I do.

[Sally Ady]

I do.

[Soren Wheeler]

This is Sally Ady. She's an old friend of mine.

[Sally Ady]

How are you?

[Soren Wheeler]

We went to school together a long time ago, but these days she's an.

[Sally Ady]

Editor, a new scientist in London.

[Soren Wheeler]

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.

[Sally Ady]

Yes, this was a story that I'd been chasing for years and years, began for her in 2007 at DARPA Tech.

[Soren Wheeler]

Which is a big gathering of like weapons developers and researchers.

[Sally Ady]

It's like 5,000 guys all, you know, looking like Agent Smith from the Matrix, you know, looking at the latest war toys, drones, bazookas.

[Soren Wheeler]

Anyway, at some point she starts talking to this woman.

[Sally Ady]

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.

[Soren Wheeler]

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. But 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.

[Sally Ady]

And I actually got new scientists to agree to send me to LA from London, which is not an insignificant expense.

[Soren Wheeler]

After a late night international flight and.

[Sally Ady]

Some LA traffic, I haven't slept, I'm sleep deprived.

[Soren Wheeler]

Sally found herself at a place called Advanced Brain Monitoring where they have a.

[Sally Ady]

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 the full room in.

[Soren Wheeler]

Front of you, like the whole wall is a screen.

[Sally Ady]

Yes.

[Soren Wheeler]

Not only that, she says, but all around you in this room are these props.

[Sally Ady]

You're behind real sandbags in proper position. They teach you how to hold the rifle properly.

[Soren Wheeler]

And the rifle, except for the fact that it shoots blanks, is basically the real deal.

[Sally Ady]

Yeah. And then it's got a laser sight.

[Soren Wheeler]

And they tell her, you know, okay, before we do this brain stimulation thing, we're actually gonna have you do some training without it. So they get her all set up, they put her behind the sandbags and they hit Go.

[Sally Ady]

You know, at first it starts out with really easy stuff, like you're shooting virtual targets that aren't people. Then it's quite, it's realistic. You get the kickback from the CO2 cartridge and then you get this like ding sound from when you hit, you know, the virtual metal target.

[Soren Wheeler]

And then it starts getting harder, so there's people instead of targets, and then more and more people until the highest.

[Sally Ady]

Level is you are at a checkpoint, like an Iraqi checkp, and everything's fine. And then all of a sudden the Humvee in front of you blows up. And then from all over the place, dozens of people in suicide bomb vests start running at you with their rifles, shooting you. And I'm Just being blown up. I can't make the decisions fast enough.

[Soren Wheeler]

She said there were just too many of them. She couldn't figure out who to shoot first.

[Sally Ady]

It was so. Oh, God. And I was so tired and I was so jet lagged and I was so. And it's funny because you think like, oh, whatever, that's a video game. But it's amazing how stressful that gets.

[Soren Wheeler]

And at a certain point, the stress started getting to her.

[Sally Ady]

I was like, all right, stop. Let's just end this.

[Soren Wheeler]

She started thinking, like, what the hell am I doing here anyway?

[Sally Ady]

Like, oh, my God, this isn't gonna be a story. And really, you just flew out to California for this?

[Mike Wisen]

She was not very good at it, and it kind of stressed her out.

[Soren Wheeler]

And then this guy walked in the room. Yes, Mike Wisen.

[Sally Ady]

Mike Weisen.

[Soren Wheeler]

He's a neuroscientist.

[Sally Ady]

He looks like Greg Allman. He's got that, like, super long hair.

[Mike Wisen]

I am fairly clean cut at the moment, but I had hair down to my belt buckle.

[Sally Ady]

So Mike Weisend has put together this contraption.

[Jad Abumrad]

What is that big box that's sitting in your lap there?

[Mike Wisen]

So this is a big red toolbox that we got literally from Sears.

[Jad Abumrad]

Mike was actually passing through New York City, so we invited him into the studio.

[Mike Wisen]

And we have electrodes that allow us to deliver current.

[Jad Abumrad]

You have a bunch of wires, I saw.

[Mike Wisen]

Yeah. And a whole bunch of batteries. So we take a set of electrodes.

[Sally Ady]

One electrode is attached to my right temple, and the other electrode is attached by a different wire to my left arm.

[Mike Wisen]

And we turn on the juice.

[Soren Wheeler]

Did it hurt?

[Sally Ady]

It wasn't so much that I suddenly tasted metal in my mouth. It tasted like I had licked the inside of an aluminum can. And then he's like, all right, try it again. I'm like, ugh. I'm not exactly expecting different results. So they start me out again right at the really hard checkpoint 1. The thing blows up. And then people start coming from all over the place, and I feel like they must have put it on an easy setting. Everything is just a little more straightforward. It's more obvious who I should pick off first. And I'm thinking to myself a little bit like, you know, when is this going to get really hard again? And then the, you know, intern or whoever comes in and turns on the lights. She's like, okay, you're done. I'm like, well, wait, that's not. That's not what. I've only been here for like, three minutes. She's like, no, no, no, that was 20 minutes. Like, no, that's not true. And I look up, and the clocks have all shifted by 20 minutes, and I swear to God, it was three minutes.

[Mike Wisen]

So almost every person that we put this on says they get into what they call a state of flow where they don't recognize that the time is going by. They're just, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[Sally Ady]

And I was like, did you guys make it easier? They're like, no, same. Same level. Like, I think you guys made it easy.

[Mike Wisen]

When Sally did it with brain stimulation, she performed at 100% accuracy.

[Sally Ady]

100%. I didn't leave anyone alive.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, what was she before?

[Mike Wisen]

I don't know, but she wasn't very good.

[Soren Wheeler]

Roughly three out of 20 the first time and 20 out of 20 the second. Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

So wait, so you're saying with just electricity, she went from being, like, totally inept to, like, a trained killer?

[Mike Wisen]

Well, it's an n of 1, so we can't go too far.

[Soren Wheeler]

But, I mean, this was just Sally's experience during this one demo. So it's not like a controlled study. But Mike has now used this device in a bunch of studies for the military.

[Sally Ady]

Yep.

[Soren Wheeler]

For example, he had one study with people looking at those grainy black and white radar images, trying to pick out, you know, what's an enemy vehicle and what isn't. And if he puts this device on their head while they're trying to learn.

[Mike Wisen]

How to do that, we can double the rate of learning.

[Robert Krulwich]

Really?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, how? I mean, what is it doing?

[Mike Wisen]

Okay, so what I think is that early on, when you are learning something.

[Soren Wheeler]

Mike says that when you're trying to learn how to do something, that's kind of tough. What's happening is that you're trying a bunch of different things.

[Mike Wisen]

You try all kinds of different ways to solve the problem.

[Soren Wheeler]

And occasionally, your brain is stumbling across an ideal sequence of neurons. Every so often, as you're practicing, all of a sudden your brain is like, oh, this, then this, then this, and this. Okay, that's it. But then it struggles to find that again, and it keeps messing up and whatever. And if you look at an expert brain, you'll actually see that preferred circuit dialed in. Like, they just do that over and over and over again. No more stumbling around. And so what Mike does is he figures out where that circuit is, and he gives it a little extra juice.

[Mike Wisen]

To, in essence, prime the pump so.

[Soren Wheeler]

That that expert circuit is more likely to fire, and you're more likely to stumble into it. And when you do stumble into it, you're more likely to stick with it.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's right.

[Mike Wisen]

That's how we think it works.

[Jad Abumrad]

But are you sure of what you're hitting? I mean, like, you're putting electricity on the outside of people's heads. So are you able to target just a small cluster of brain cells, or is it a region that you're hitting or like a thousand cells?

[Mike Wisen]

What I'm talking about is millions of cells.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's a lot.

[Soren Wheeler]

Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

Is that precise enough to target the place where a task is being done in a brain? If it's a million.

[Mike Wisen]

In our work, yes.

[Soren Wheeler]

And Mike claims that even though it's a blunt tool.

[Mike Wisen]

Yeah. This is not a scalpel. This is a sledgehammer.

[Soren Wheeler]

If you know the right group of neurons or region of the brain to target, this can work with almost any task.

[Mike Wisen]

If you want to target visuospatial learning, for example, searching an image, you'd put this on the right side of your head, roughly near the temple. But if you wanted to learn textual material, you can put this on the left side of your head, and it will have a similar effect.

[Jad Abumrad]

If you wanted to learn textual material.

[Robert Krulwich]

It can't be true. No, I really. You mean if I want to learn irregular verbs in French, I could get one of your things. I stick it on the part of my head that is good of a.

[Mike Wisen]

Grammar we haven't tested in with learning foreign languages. But if a native English speaker is learning a long English sentence, they can recall it with greater fidelity if they have this on their head while they study those sentences. And if you go right parietal back over just behind your ear and up above your ear, you can learn math better.

[Jad Abumrad]

We were all kind of like, eh, I don't know. But since Mike had his device there with him, should we try it?

[Soren Wheeler]

Sure.

[Mike Wisen]

I'm ready.

[Jad Abumrad]

We thought. No, let's try it and see for ourselves. Do you want to do it, Robert? I don't know. I mean, I. Robert actually pretended he has an appointment and he left. But me taking one for the team here, I don't do fear.

[Peter Reiner]

All right.

[Jad Abumrad]

Do I need to be seated for this or I can.

[Soren Wheeler]

Yeah, you should be seated.

[Jad Abumrad]

I should be seated.

[Robert Krulwich]

All right, stick around because we are going to put electricity right into the man's head. And I'm talking about Chad.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right, so you've got here in front of me, you have two little circles. Electrodes. Is that these are.

[Soren Wheeler]

Yep.

[Jad Abumrad]

Red wires and black wire. So I get two of these on.

[Mike Wisen]

My head, one on your upper arm.

[Jad Abumrad]

One on My upper arm for the demo caught my mike, showed me a bunch of stereograms. All right, so what am I doing here? I'm looking at a bunch of marbles, a million of them, in some kind of repeating pattern. Like, you know these things, Robert, like, where you're staring at this 2D picture of, like, repeating pattern of marbles or something, and you're supposed to unfocus your eyes in just the right way so that a 3D picture will somehow emerge from the background.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Make my eyes go batty. So the idea of this demo was like, let's see if I can train my eyes to figure out how to pull the 3D picture out.

[Soren Wheeler]

You see it?

[Mike Wisen]

I didn't get it yet.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, I ain't got nothing. I have never been good at these. I mean, I get headaches when I go to 3D movies, and it took me, like, 10 minutes to get one. Ah, it's a butterfly. There he is. Whoa. That's cool to see. Like, just one. Wow, look at that. All right, so now you can juice me.

[Mike Wisen]

All right, I'm gonna turn it on.

[Soren Wheeler]

Okay. Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

I don't feel anything yet. Oh, yeah. Okay, there it is. Ah.

[Soren Wheeler]

What's it feeling?

[Jad Abumrad]

Feels like a bunch of mosquitoes are biting me in my temple. It's. I could taste it now, too. So people get that, huh?

[Mike Wisen]

We don't know what that is.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right, so now I'm gonna. I'm gonna look at the stereoscopic images one more time. Here we are. We've got a green and pink. Whoa. That just became a world. Look at that. Suddenly a 3D globe just pops out of the background. Okay, next one. All right, so now I'm looking at a big, green grass. Blades of grass. Repeating, repeating, repeating. Let's see.

[Mike Wisen]

Whoa.

[Soren Wheeler]

Swans.

[Jad Abumrad]

I see swans. Origami swans. 3D swans. Next one. Now I'm looking at a good. Sort of a trippy paisley background. And Bambi. 3D. Bambi. Next one. All right, now we have flower background. Sort of yellow and pink flower tile in the background. Whoa. Boxes. Boxes floating in space. Next. Whoa. A little ballerina doing a handstand on the balance beam. Robots. Little Hershey's Kisses popping right out. A star. They're coming out really fast.

[Mike Wisen]

Mmm.

[Jad Abumrad]

Big pretzel. This is awesome. Coiled snake.

[Mike Wisen]

So anyway.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow.

[Mike Wisen]

That's the. That's what it feels like to get your brain juiced up.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay. I definitely felt like I could. You couldn't give them to me fast enough. I was like. I was like, another one, another one, another One. So maybe that's a flow state like you were describing. I don't know. I feel very, very awake. Okay. So in the end, I ended up doing something like 50 stereograms in a really short amount of time. So I definitely think something was going on. But I have to be honest, I mean, I was skeptical.

[Robert Krulwich]

You were skeptical even when you were flying free?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, it's like I don't entirely trust the experience I had because it could simply be like a placebo, it could be adrenaline, I don't know.

[Soren Wheeler]

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. It just, no matter what, it just seems like the next flavor of new age thing. So I started calling around.

[Peter Reiner]

My name is Peter Reiner and I'm a professor at the University of British Columbia.

[Soren Wheeler]

Cool.

[Jad Abumrad]

So.

[Soren Wheeler]

So Peter Reiner actually studies this whole field. He looks at public perception and the quality of research. And I just basically asked him, you know, is this for real? Like if you have a healthy brain, you put a little electricity into it, has it been proven that that will enhance learning or whatever else they claim?

[Peter Reiner]

Well, maybe the best way to answer that. Part of the reason that there's all this interest is that TDCS appears to be relatively effective.

[Soren Wheeler]

And he says this is based on a lot of different studies in a lot of different areas.

[Peter Reiner]

But the key to what I just said is relatively. And so the caveat that I have to add is that pretty much all of the studies that have been done to date are relatively small.

[Soren Wheeler]

He says his early days and the studies have been done have only been done with a few subjects, maybe 20.

[Peter Reiner]

People, larger studies, 40 or 50.

[Soren Wheeler]

Now a lot of these studies do find a positive effect, but if you're a hard nosed scientist, you know, those small sample sizes aren't enough to make a very big claim. Even so, turn it on. Moment of truth. The cat's kind of already out of the bag. Because if you go on YouTube, white flash, really brief, really quick. That's cool. You can find a surprisingly large number of videos of people experimenting with these devices.

[Jad Abumrad]

I instantly feel very good, very calm, very safe, not really worried about anything.

[Soren Wheeler]

A lot of the videos show you how to make your own. First, we'll start with the circuit diagram. You just go to Radio Shack and buy a few simple parts. There's the battery, that's going to be your 9 volt.

[Jad Abumrad]

And here's a few alligator clips. Since I don't have any solder with.

[Soren Wheeler]

Me, although I have a switch in the circuit. I mean, YouTube just seems to be filled with people who are trying to hotwire their own brain.

[Jad Abumrad]

So for the past year I've been wanting to increase my brain power Since I have probably below average brain power compared to normal people.

[Soren Wheeler]

I want to study neurosciences. But as many of you, I don't.

[Jad Abumrad]

Have the resources to go to the school right now. So what I like to do is I like to use TDCS while I'm learning my vocabulary list.

[Soren Wheeler]

Alright, So I want to give you an update on using TDCS to learn a foreign language. People are using this for a whole range of things, given how flexible the technique is. That's Nick Fitz. He works with Peter Reiner, the guy we talked to earlier. And he says not only can you do a lot of different kinds of things with this device, on top of that, it's dirt cheap. So let's say in the time that it takes me to listen to one of your episodes, I could probably go to the store, come back and build a TDCS device for around $20. For $20. Right. And so I'm. As I said, I mean, is that something that makes you nervous? I'll say first, I think the DIY community is quite thoughtful, but it does make me nervous. There's some people that report loss of consciousness after using it. There are some people that are reporting feeling burns. There's actually one report of somebody going temporarily blind. This guy on YouTube, young Asian kid.

[Jad Abumrad]

I've been experimenting on which places on my head would improve memory.

[Soren Wheeler]

He talks about how he spent a year kind of experimenting with it. He put it in one place and.

[Jad Abumrad]

After about five minutes, I felt really, like really angry and depressed.

[Soren Wheeler]

Put it in another place.

[Jad Abumrad]

That got me a really high score on lumosity. And I've only been stimulating my brain for about five minutes.

[Soren Wheeler]

It's like he's playing Russian roulette with that thing.

[Peter Reiner]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Soren Wheeler]

Which brings up the larger point, you know, that this device is kind of impossibly hard to regulate because a kid like this can put it anywhere he wants on his head. And if he moves it just a couple of inches, it could have a drastically different effect.

[Peter Reiner]

And that's really what is.

[Soren Wheeler]

Because according to Peter Reiner, while we might like to think of the brain as being a bunch of separate circuits that do separate tasks, really it's an ecosystem. Every part affects every other part in some way.

[Peter Reiner]

And when you put your electrodes on the head, you affect, in theory, a small area of the brain right under the electrodes. But it's already been shown that that effect can then multiply and Spread throughout the nervous system, even down to your spinal cord.

[Soren Wheeler]

I mean, there's a theory out there, it's called the zero sum theory of the brain that some people use as a framework for thinking about all this, which is, like, you know, one part goes up, another part goes like. There's only so much juice in the brain. So if you send juice one direction, there's less juice somewhere else.

[Jad Abumrad]

So then if you were enhancing one part, you're by definition diminishing another, maybe.

[Sally Ady]

And to be honest, there was definitely an after effect.

[Soren Wheeler]

This is kind of why I ended up talking to Sally about this. Why I got so interested in this piece in the first place, is because of what happened to her after the sniper training.

[Sally Ady]

So driving down from LA to Carlsbad to go do this was an absolute nightmare. I hadn't driven in, like, a year because I've been living in London, where I just do public transportation. But on the way up, it's kind of like. I mean, I hate to compare it to Mario Kart, but it's just this extremely pleasant experience. I feel like I drove better that day than I ever drove before. Like, it was very obvious where I could pass people without irritating them and just. I don't know. It's a weird. It's a weird memory. But I think I had more fun driving that day than I ever did since.

[Soren Wheeler]

And at some point, she realized it wasn't just about her driving ability.

[Sally Ady]

So I would say that. I mean, I don't know how much I want to get into sort of in public, on the radio, about, you know, being a bit anxious. I mean, I guess that's not particularly controversial. Probably all writers, like, are sort of riddled with anxiety. But, you know, I have this constant struggle with all the little angry gnomes in my head, you know, populating my head and telling me, like, all the things that I don't do right and, you know, all the things that I've done wrong that day. They just keep this incredibly, like, comprehensive tally of them. And then, you know, the ones who worry about the future and, you know, the ones who tell me I'm gonna be living in a cardboard box in a year. I mean, it's just like an amazing cacophony.

[Soren Wheeler]

But she says, sitting in that car.

[Sally Ady]

They were just completely turned off, I think, for a couple of days. And it was a really, you know, really.

[Soren Wheeler]

For a couple days.

[Sally Ady]

For a couple of days. And to tell you the truth, it was kind of like everything just. I was just this person that I hadn't experienced before. And I thought maybe this is the actual sort of core person who I am when I'm not. When all my baggage isn't just weighing on me. It was like somebody had wiped a really steamy window, and I was just able to look at the world for what it was.

[Soren Wheeler]

And I was curious whether, like, there's a connection there that, like, to be a good performer of some task goes along with shutting down the parts of yourself that say, I don't know. I don't think maybe I can't, maybe I shouldn't. And that, like, there's actually a real connection between amping up one and tamping down the other.

[Jad Abumrad]

I mean, it makes sense because if you're giving one circuit more power, you might be taking away from other places. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, it does. I find this, like, you know, since you and I are just been on stage, Robert, one of the things I struggle with most during the performances is I'm sitting there. We're both sitting there. We've got our scripts, and I have this box of buttons, and I have to remember which buttons do what things. And there's, like, the musicians. I figure out where they come in and out. And all of these things, they become competing voices. Yeah. They become these little chattering gnomes that. Sally puts it in my head and I'm like, wait, what does that. Okay, now, when does that come in? Where are we?

[Sally Ady]

What.

[Robert Krulwich]

What's happening?

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, my God, you're. You're messing this up. Jed, come on. Oh, why do you keep doing. And I get, like, kind of crazy sometimes during a show. I can't actually even focus on what you're saying. It's not a good feeling. And then there are other times where something happens. It's almost like a mode. And suddenly it's, like, right there. I know I'm right with you. It's the easiest thing in the world to listen to what you're saying and respond instinctively and in the moment. And they literally feel like different chemical modes or maybe electrical modes. You know what I mean?

[Robert Krulwich]

That's really. That's very interesting to me because, I mean, going back to the performance stuff, you can't really make it happen. I mean, I guess you could, I suppose, but it. It doesn't feel that way. It feels like it's somehow feels like.

[Jad Abumrad]

It'S a gift, you know, like, oh, thank you, universe. I feel really awake and present right now. Thank you. What happens when. It's an expectation, you know, what happens to our. The way in which we move through the world if we can just. If we can create that on demand.

[Soren Wheeler]

We can order it up. Yeah, I think the gift versus ordering it up, that's pretty deep to me. I mean, I don't. I feel like in a world where you order things up, then you're in a world where you think you deserve things or you think you've earned them, or you think other people haven't.

[Robert Krulwich]

I agree with that completely.

[Soren Wheeler]

That's a. That's a world. That's a world that's empty of true gratitude.

[Sally Ady]

To tell you the truth, one of the really worrying things to me was afterward how. How much I craved doing it again. It felt like a drug with no side effect. I mean, I don't know if I'm gonna get addicted to electricity. Seems unlikely, but.

[Soren Wheeler]

Gotta get some, man.

[Sally Ady]

Shoplifting batteries.

[Soren Wheeler]

Licking them in the supermarket corner.

[Jad Abumrad]

Licking nine volt batteries. Thank you, Soren.

[Soren Wheeler]

No problem. And thanks a lot to Sally Ady.

[Robert Krulwich]

So, time to say goodbye. I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm Jed Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

Thanks for listening.

[Sally Ady]

Hi, this is Emily in Austin, Texas. Radiolab is supported in part by the.

[Soren Wheeler]

National Science foundation and by the Alfred.

[Sally Ady]

P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about [e-mail].

[State Farm / Fidelity Ad Voice]

Building a portfolio with Fidelity Basket Portfolios is kind of like making a sandwich. It's as simple as picking your stocks and ETFs, sort of like your meats and other topics, and managing it as one big, juicy investment.

[Soren Wheeler]

Mmm.

[State Farm / Fidelity Ad Voice]

Now that's pretty good. Learn [e-mail] baskets Investing involves risks, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member nyse, SIPC.

[Jad Abumrad]

If your small business has a problem.

[Sally Ady]

You could say, just my luck.

[Jad Abumrad]

But you should say, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And we'll help get you back in business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.