A Battery for the Brain

[nodrew]

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/full/041025-9.html

[Fierce Critter]

Food for thought...

[Jarodaka]

I can't wait to see the Darwin Awards for homespun brain batteries... "So's I told my cuzzin if we just hook up that thar car battery to his scalp..."

The early work showed some potential, but fell from favour because of a perceived link to electroconvulsive therapy, a controversial technique in which patients with depression are treated by having short but intense pulses of electricity applied to the brain.

Hey, it's not like ECT isn't used anymore.

[Soulrev]

so if I stuck a 9 volt battery to my forehead for a few minutes, I'd do better on my tests? Most excellent

[Onyx]

I had to explain it in detail to the first one or two subjects," she says. But once she had convinced them that the current was harmless, Iyer says, recruitment was not a problem.

hmmm...

I can see it now "well, we did think it was harmless but now our subjects are glowing in the dark and shorting out their computers and televisions"