Want To Be A Genius? Try Thinking Cap!

When I was a kid, I always used to imagine (or say daydream!) that I should have some superpower that will somehow fill my brain with the knowledge from the whole book without actually reading it. Anyway, that is not something really happening in the world today. Yet, imagine a cap that increases your brain power after wearing it!  Australian researchers have developed a “thinking cap” that encourages the idol right half of the brain to think more effectively.


Professor Allan Snyder
The man who is the backbone of this research is Professor Allan Snyder of Sydney University's Centre of the Mind, who has been working on this project since almost 10 years! We have seen some cases wherein people who got hit by lightning suddenly became very creative. "Thinking cap" basically aims to promote creativity by passing low levels of electricity through the brain. Prof Snyder’s cap artificially manipulates the hemispheres of the brain to recreate the phenomenon.
The device consists of two conductors fastened to the head by a rubber strap. Low level electric pulses are sent through the conductor. The left side of the brain, which is associated with knowledge, is suppressed and the right side, linked with creativity, is stimulated.

They recently tested this device on a total of 60 people. They found that 20% people were able to solve a complex math problem without the device on. But when people wore the thinking cap, 60% people were able to solve the same! The cap has a temporary effect on the brain. If the brain is stimulated by low-level electric pulses for 10-15 minutes, its effect lasts for about an hour.

Even though the tests imply that the cap can help people become smarter, Prof Snyder told AFP: "You wouldn't use this to study or to help your memory, You would use this if you wanted to look at a problem anew, if you wanted to look at the world, just briefly, with a child's view, if you wanted to look outside the box.”

"The dream is that one day we may be able to stimulate the brain in a particular way to give you, just momentarily, an unfiltered view of the world," Snyder said. According to him, its more of a “creativity cap”.

Well, Prof. Snyder is not the only one working on this. In 2010, the researchers at Rockefeller University had proved that deep brain stimulation can be used to get a coma patient out of traumatic brain injury.

As this cap is directly related to the brain, its bad medical effects need to be taken into consideration. If doctors warn us to use mobile for less time and say that too much use of mobile phones can damage the brain, we can imagine what can happen because of this cap! Though Snyder says that its not meant to make you smarter, people are going to use it for all the crazy stuff and for too much time. Critics are already on a roll saying that the test results don’t prove creativity in anyway! It’s just another publicity stunt, something that has happened many times before in the field of neuroscience, they say. Well, the truth, the myth, the good and the bad will be out soon!

Source of News: Dvice & France24