Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus

Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by api on Monday February 06, 2012 @10:38AM (#3557720)

I find it frustrating and depressing: this stuff just never seems to get operationalized in a way that's accessible to folks outside university labs.

Where are the startups? Where are the hobbyist groups?

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by blhack on Monday February 06, 2012 @12:50PM (#3558367)

>Where are the hobbyist groups

In Mesa, AZ: https://www.google.com/calendar/event?eid=bHB1ZXIyNXBpaHFpM2...

Our hackerspace, Heatsync Labs, does "Augmenting Humanity" on Monday nights. I believe one of the guys there is building a TMS device right now.

Also this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUW7dQ92yDU

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by nostromo on Monday February 06, 2012 @12:52PM (#3558374)

Someone pointed me to this on another thread: http://soterixmedical.com/tdcs.php

And this video on how to use it: http://www.jove.com/video/2744/electrode-positioning-and-mon...

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by aantix on Monday February 06, 2012 @05:07PM (#3559421)

I'm a willing guinea pig and would love to explore this topic more. Maybe we should start a meetup group in San Francisco? Anyone else interested?

[email protected] http://www.github.com/aantix

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by Sthorpe on Monday February 06, 2012 @10:41AM (#3557733)

I was just thinking how awesome it would be to have a graph of my brain waves so I could tune them to alpha waves while coding. :)

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by Sthorpe on Monday February 06, 2012 @11:09AM (#3557855)

Holy crap,...just bought this.

http://www.plxwave.com/

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by timdefrag on Monday February 06, 2012 @11:33AM (#3557963)

I tested a very similar device for the company I used to work at, the UI looked identical at least. There was very little relationship between my actual mental state, and the state of the display. The device I used had an API, so I wrote my own visualizer to make sure they weren't just blurring out the data -- long story short, I was never impressed with it. Blinking or moving your head triggered a larger reaction than any thought impulse.

Maybe the tech has gotten better, but I wouldn't hold your breath for anything that costs $100.

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by jonhendry on Monday February 06, 2012 @01:45PM (#3558622)

"Blinking or moving your head triggered a larger reaction than any thought impulse."

No surprise there, the muscles of the head will have a stronger signal than the brain, if you're using electrodes outside the skull.

There might be some way of filtering those out, perhaps using additional electrodes directly on the relevant muscles. Subtract the signal on those electrodes from the signal on the other electrodes.

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by joeyo on Monday February 06, 2012 @04:12PM (#3559209)

Also, based on the geometry of the xwave headset it looks like the electrode(s) are very rostral, so I would imagine that it picks up a lot of EOG from the eyes and EMG from the frontalis and corrugator supercilii (eyebrow muscles).

The ground, again from what I can tell from the photo, is on the earlobe. This is not a terrible place for a ground (there are no muscles there) but it's not ideal for removing EMG artifacts.

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by angkec on Monday February 06, 2012 @11:31AM (#3557950)

This seems really interesting. Have you played with it? What's your experience?

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by Sthorpe on Monday February 06, 2012 @12:50PM (#3558366)

Just bought this http://neurosky.com/Products/MindSet.aspx one like 30 minutes ago.

If you email me, I will let you know what its like.

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by amstr on Tuesday February 07, 2012 @01:44AM (#3560761)

I have one, and it's OK -- you can notice broad differences with different activities or different mental states. The video game that comes with it is supposed to allow you to control a character, and that didn't work for me or other people who tried it at all. Also the plastic casing is really bad and broke quickly on mine. All in all neat but overpriced.

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by hosh on Monday February 06, 2012 @09:17PM (#3560135)

http://www.wilddivine.com/

This device will measure heart-beat variability too.

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by techiferous on Monday February 06, 2012 @05:38PM (#3559551)

> Where are the startups?

This type of device may need FDA approval which would require the setup of clinical trials, etc. So that would be a significant barrier to entry for startups.

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by bri3d on Monday February 06, 2012 @10:57AM (#3557799)

http://brmlab.cz/project/brain_hacking/tdcs

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Re:Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus by draggnar on Monday February 06, 2012 @11:01PM (#3560396)

there is a subreddit r/tdcs

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