Rewiring your brain is no longer just a metaphor. According to the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Journal of Neuroscience, scientists are using electrical brain therapies to change the way people think and treat major neurological disorders like Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and obsessive compulsive disorder and even to stimulate learning, memory and creativity (Meinzer et al). While brain stimulation treatments are having real clinical results, we are still far from understanding how this technology works and the long-term implications of interfering with the normal function of the brain.
Brain stimulation technology generally works by directly or indirectly sending electrical impulses to the brain. The National Institute of Mental Health has current information about the different varieties of brain stimulation. Therapies like transcranial direct current stimulation send impulses via electrodes on the scalp, which is an indirect form of brain stimulation. Recently, deep brain stimulation is growing popularity as an direct form of brain stimulation where the electrodes are actually placed inside the brain. Both direct and indirect forms interrupt normal brain firing patterns, but it is still a mystery which parts of the brain are being affected. The long-term implications will be for such treatments are likewise largely unknown.
Despite the physiological obscurities, the field of brain stimulation research has been subject to a lot of hype. People are starting to make their own DIY brain stimulation kits from saline solution and sponges as electrodes. Discussions of what materials to buy and how to safely perform the tasks can be found social forums like reddit. This DIY brain stimulation movement is dangerous because some maybe careless in the amount of electrical current that they apply or the length of time for which they apply it. Mistakes like this could potentially cause long-term damage to the brain.
While research into electrical brain stimulation is certainly a worthwhile pursuit given its success as a treatment for depression, we need to learn more about the brain from resources like the human brain project and invest more into neurological research before brain stimulation can be an everyday activity. I'll put my homemade brain in the back of my closet until then.
