Indeed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

On the other hand, if it is "broke", the long-term effects of tDCS are about as well-studied as the long-term effects of many of the psychoactive substances (legal and otherwise) that we regularly take. No one knows, e.g., what happens to brains 50 years after 5 years of chronically administering SSRIs. Nor do we really know how to characterize "the long-term effects" of nicotine intake (and it's not at all clear that the "long-term effects" of anything that changes one's brain -- apart from in obvious ways e.g. by shrinking it -- is even something that it would make sense to try to characterize).

In general, when it comes to psychoactive anything (and you might even include words, music, prolonged withdrawal from society, and sexy walking in this list) we don't have much more than a few interesting results here and there. When it comes to brains/minds/persons, we really don't know.

What we can surmise is that those things that mammalian brains have not been exposed to (LSD, tDCS, fluoxetine) are likely to have less predictable effects than things in the environment that are phylogenetically familiar (sleep, exercise, prolonged concentration, temporally extended effort, etc.).

In other words, if things are going poorly for you, try the boring approaches first. If those approaches don't work, though, there aren't really any compelling reasons to avoid techniques that are less familiar to your biology.

"Indeed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I would take tDCS over smoking or drinking, any day of the week.

Or even extreme sports.

It's socially acceptable to do some activities which are known to be deadly, but god forbid trying the unknown! That's a total faux pas. What BS. Where's the cost/benefit analysis. Yes: drinking, smoking, and sports can yield utility (fun), but people increasing their IQ or any other vector of intelligence could have a profound impact on society.

I'm in agreement with the rest of your post.

Edit: changed italics from HTML to Markdown

Your list of phylogenetically familiar things could include DMT and psilocin. These chemicals are biosynthesized in many plants and animals and quite structurally similar to serotonin.

Tons of drugs & physical therapies have unknown MOAs!

It's "tDCS". You've mixed up the letters in the acronym, and incorrectly capitalized the first letter.

It's thought that it works via the depolarization of the resting membrane potential.

This is why I haven't tried it. I have zero ways to establish the long term risks of this. I don't want to radically enhance something and end up with depression or a decrease in other areas.

are we at least somewhat confident that it does what is claimed?

As with most basic science research today in neuroscience, at least, many of the TDCS studies are based on small sample sizes and many of the effects, although "statistically significant" are in fact modest effects. So I guess the answer to your question is, sort of.

He's not sure of anything, by the looks of it!

But please see this post by Science-Based Medicine: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/

Steve Novella for the rescue!

fixed link: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/brain-stimulation-for-th...