Pseudoscientific rubbish. The conclusion is entirely based on the assumption that there wouldn't have been any progress in the n-back task without brain stimulation and that is 1. pure speculation, 2. implausible because practice usually makes you better at a task. Also: placebo. The general idea that we can "unlock" more brain power by simply applying electrical currents to the brain is utterly silly.
Eyeballing it, the pre-tDCS trend is relatively flat compared to the tDCS period. A t-test is wrong, of course, but I would be fairly surprised if a more appropriate analysis estimated a much smaller improvement. (I can't try anything because the Excel spreadsheet he provides only includes averages in ad hoc formatting, while I'd much prefer the raw per-round scores contained in his Brainworkshop's data/stats.txt file.)
The general idea that we can "unlock" more brain power by simply applying electrical currents to the brain is utterly silly.
You might as well argue against the concept of 'stimulants' with that argument... The brain is an adaptation-executing organ which (among other things) seeks to conserve resources, which may not be the same set of trade-offs we would prefer in a modern environment.
While this might be nonsense, the general idea isn't: some DARPA-funded projects have been playing around with tDCS for a while now with remarkable success.[0]
He states in the article that "considering that I have done the dual n back task (on and off) over two years before starting the tDCS experiment, my baseline was well-established."
Comments
Pseudoscientific rubbish. The conclusion is entirely based on the assumption that there wouldn't have been any progress in the n-back task without brain stimulation and that is 1. pure speculation, 2. implausible because practice usually makes you better at a task. Also: placebo. The general idea that we can "unlock" more brain power by simply applying electrical currents to the brain is utterly silly.
Eyeballing it, the pre-tDCS trend is relatively flat compared to the tDCS period. A t-test is wrong, of course, but I would be fairly surprised if a more appropriate analysis estimated a much smaller improvement. (I can't try anything because the Excel spreadsheet he provides only includes averages in ad hoc formatting, while I'd much prefer the raw per-round scores contained in his Brainworkshop's data/stats.txt file.)
You might as well argue against the concept of 'stimulants' with that argument... The brain is an adaptation-executing organ which (among other things) seeks to conserve resources, which may not be the same set of trade-offs we would prefer in a modern environment.
While this might be nonsense, the general idea isn't: some DARPA-funded projects have been playing around with tDCS for a while now with remarkable success.[0]
[0]: http://www.radiolab.org/story/9-volt-nirvana/
Here is a review:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4154388/
He states in the article that "considering that I have done the dual n back task (on and off) over two years before starting the tDCS experiment, my baseline was well-established."
"on and off" versus regularly during the experiment. So the baseline was not well-established.