DARUSHIMO

Over email O’Sullivan explained how ITP has accommodated so many changes over the years: “The program is pretty agile [and] evolutionary, so we change a little every year—which heads off big cataclysmic changes. Doubling the space of the floor and accepting more students was one big positive landmark. The Dot Com boom did bring the culture in a slightly bad direction but the bust brought it back.” Some alumni, like Dennis Crowley creator of Dodgeball (which was bought by Google one year after he graduated) and Foursqure, have had quick success in the New York startup community, but O’Sullivan says, “most of our students have a more normal success pattern that takes longer.”

The idea of a simple, cheap and widely available device that could boost brain function sounds too good to be true.

Yet promising results in the lab with emerging ‘brain stimulation’ techniques, though still very preliminary, have prompted Oxford neuroscientists to team up with leading ethicists at the University to consider the issues the new technology could raise. […]

TDCS uses electrodes placed on the outside of the head to pass tiny currents across regions of the brain for 20 minutes or so. The currents of 1–2 mA make it easier for neurons in these brain regions to fire. It is thought that this enhances the making and strengthening of connections involved in learning and memory.

The technique is painless, all indications at the moment are that it is safe, and the effects can last over the long term.

Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh, who has carried out brain stimulation studies at the Department of Experimental Psychology, very definitely has a vision for how TDCS could be used in the future: ‘I can see a time when people plug a simple device into an iPad so that their brain is stimulated when they are doing their homework, learning French or taking up the piano,’ he says. […]

‘We ask: should we use brain stimulation to enhance cognition, and what are the risks?’ explains Roi. ‘Our aim was to look at whether it gives rise to new ethical issues, issues that will increasingly need to be thought about in our field but also by policymakers and the public.’