Too impatient to meditate? A mild shock to the scalp could help. The benefits of being mindful take time, but there might be a way to speed them up.

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Researchers are exploring whether a technology called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can help make meditation easier and get more people to do it regularly.
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▼ Meditation is one of the few things that so far has been shown to be almost exclusively good for us. While the field is in its infancy, research suggests it might help boost focus and concentration, reduce anxiety, alleviate depression, and enhance empathy and compassion. Scientists don’t know exactly how meditation has these effects (nor how big of an impact they might have) but they think it works by changing the structure and function of several critical brain regions, including areas involved in learningand memory and emotion regulation. Perhaps best of all, meditation is free (given you know how to do it properly) and has virtually no negative side effects.
But despite its seeming simplicity (just empty your mind and focus on your breathing) and potential benefits, meditation is much easier said than done. A small cadre of researchers is exploring whether a technology called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can help make meditation easier and get more people to do it regularly. All you have to do is put two electrodes on your forehead and deliver a mild shock to your brain.
Most people who try meditating quit, says Bashar Badran, a neuroscientist at the US Army Research Lab and co-founder of the company Bodhi NeuroTechthat’s pairing meditation with tDCS. “They’ll put on some headphones with an app and they’ll try it and they’ll say, ‘oh I didn’t feel anything,’ and they’ll quit.”
The paired technique they are researching, tDCS, is a type of noninvasive brain stimulation that came on the scene in 2001. It involves attaching two electrodes to the scalp, one that delivers a positive electrical charge to the brain and the other, a negative one. Changing the electrical frequency of the brain makes neurons—which communicate with one another through electrical signals—more or less likely to fire, and over time this can rewire the connections in the brain.
Scientists are researching tDCS for its potential to treat a host of different neurological and psychological disorders, including depression, chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, addiction, and insomnia. Several companies also sell tDCS devices directly to consumers with claims that it can enhance alertness, focus, energy, and even athletic ability. However, none of these assertions have been proven, and tDCS is not yet approved by the FDA for the treatment of any disease.
The technology’s most well-backed benefit seems to be in enhancing learning. By adding a low dose of electricity to the brain, the positive charge from tDCS ostensibly makes it more likely that the cells will fire. That added electrical boost can be especially useful when trying to learn a new skill, which requires your brain to make new connections between cells that may not be used for communicating. Learning to meditate is just like learning any other skill, so it’s feasible that tDCS could help with the process.
One important caveat to the research is that no one is really sure how well tDCS works. A debateis raging in the field about whether the electrical current can actually penetrate the scalp enough to have any effect on the brain. Plus, it’s hard to confirm if you’re really hitting the area of the brain you think you are. However, Badran and other tDCS researchers say they are confident in the effects and results they see.
“If you look at different forms of cognition, [tDCS is] most effective to change attention,”  (▪ ▪ ▪)

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