We are cooking up an episode frame around “Super Memory” or just boosting our memories and our ability to remember, in general. I spoke with Dr. Vincent Clark, who along with Dr. Pilly Praveen have authored several papers on their research in stimulation to improve memory formation.
Loose notes from our call:
Our tech is related to TDCS. It’s multi-channel instead of two electrodes. Can do 32 channels and a variety of different methods. The one that worked best is we train subjects on a task — we can present the task using VR or on a computer screen. The goal is for the subject to see complex images and cues and potential threats (bombs, snipers) and test how much you learned. Then they sleep in lab and either stimulate or not, depending on condition, and wake up and test again.
Does stimulation help with learning to detect threats? This closed loop stimulation that zaps you with the part of your brain that does memory consolidation.
Underlying principle of TDCS is the same as Halo headsets, but with diff brain areas.
In some studies it double peoples ability to learn/remember.
With sleep stimulation, the larger effect is with stimuli that’s novel from the original scenario during training. The effect is larger to stimulate with different contexts. The cognitive task is the same. But one stimulation is, TDCS during training (stimulation focused on the right frontal lobe) and we enhance people’s abilities to detect threats and learn to respond to them. Then later, when TDCS wears off, they’re still better at detecting and responding to threats.
With that same protocol on right frontal lobe, we have had subjects do a different task which doesn’t have anything to do with threats. You have to classify photos of maps from diff parts of the world. We quadrupled people’s performance with TDCS over the right frontal lobe. The results give us clues to how TDCS is working. It makes people more tenacious. They don’t give up as easily. They’re more persistent. It could generalize to a lot of diff things in the future!
“Everyone wants to be my research subject.”
To repeat this protocol we need equipment that’s off site. Could arrive by 24th.
For demo purposes we could do a nap. We may not seem the same effects for a whole night study, but we have the subject come sleep in the lab without stimulation just to get used to it, and the next night is when we apply stimulation. For demo, we’d put a neoprene electrode cap on your head, but with electrodes in it, and then we record EEG while you sleep and the algorithm will wait until you’re in a deep stage of sleep and then stimulate. We might have to turn the threshold down during a nap. Then you could record EEG screen, record me sleeping in the lab.
There are a few other things we could show you — besides electrical stimulation, we also have magnetic stimulation, ultrasound to modulate brain activity, and infared light to modulate memories. After our success with electrical stimulation, we branched out. We don’t have a lot of cool successful data but we can show if you’re interested.
ORDER:
test
an hour of training
test again
sleep with stim (all night long)
test again (next morning)
(Naps would abbreviate the whole schedule.)
Future Human 