So, “changes brain waves” and similar things are mostly worthless statements. We don’t know enough about what our sensor readings mean to assign a direction to any particular change, and if you don’t know if a change is good or bad and you don’t expect things to stay the same… what can you say?
As for that you can harm function, well, obviously! For TDCS in particular, the idea is that you can either lower or raise the action potential in a particular region, and you would expect the effect of lowering to be roughly the opposite of the effect of raising. So it’s no surprise that, say, changing the polarity could be very relevant. (The article makes the more subtle point that instead of just boosting overall function, one is likely making tradeoffs, but those sorts of tradeoffs represent increased mental flexibility that’s overall good, because you can shape your mind to complement whatever task you’re currently facing.)
The brain wave change they are describing has not been seen before, as i read it. Good or bad, it shows that doing a physical AND mental components together has produced something new and unstudied. there are some studies done on meditation, visualizations, and breath control too, and i must assume they haven’t plotted the same feature there.
I know there are also some papers coming out now showing some faults in MRI software and analysis that may undermine some of the results from those studies , but these are EEGs, so prob not as much an issue.
The tCDS paper seems to say you can choose either memory optimization , or flexibility and focus in thinking, but you won’t get both....
So, “changes brain waves” and similar things are mostly worthless statements. We don’t know enough about what our sensor readings mean to assign a direction to any particular change, and if you don’t know if a change is good or bad and you don’t expect things to stay the same… what can you say?
As for that you can harm function, well, obviously! For TDCS in particular, the idea is that you can either lower or raise the action potential in a particular region, and you would expect the effect of lowering to be roughly the opposite of the effect of raising. So it’s no surprise that, say, changing the polarity could be very relevant. (The article makes the more subtle point that instead of just boosting overall function, one is likely making tradeoffs, but those sorts of tradeoffs represent increased mental flexibility that’s overall good, because you can shape your mind to complement whatever task you’re currently facing.)
The brain wave change they are describing has not been seen before, as i read it. Good or bad, it shows that doing a physical AND mental components together has produced something new and unstudied. there are some studies done on meditation, visualizations, and breath control too, and i must assume they haven’t plotted the same feature there. I know there are also some papers coming out now showing some faults in MRI software and analysis that may undermine some of the results from those studies , but these are EEGs, so prob not as much an issue.
The tCDS paper seems to say you can choose either memory optimization , or flexibility and focus in thinking, but you won’t get both....