Brain Hacker

[Suk Harian]

Therewards Harris is talking about are a big part of what makes smartphones so appealing. The chance of getting likes on Facebook and Instagram. Cute emojis in text messages. And new followers on Twitter.

Now he travels the country trying to convince programmers and anyone else who will listen that the business model of tech companies needs to change. He wants products designed to make the best use of our time not just grab our attention.

Ramsay Brown studied neuroscience before co-founding Dopamine Labs, a start-up crammed into a garage. The company is named after the dopamine molecule in our brains that aids in the creation of desire and pleasure. Brown and his colleagues write computer code for apps used by fitness companies and financial firms. The programs are designed to provoke a neurological response.

The computer code he creates finds the best moment to give you one of those rewards, which have no actual value, but Brown says trigger your brain to make you want more. For example, on Instagram, he told us sometimes those likes come in a sudden rush.

While Brown is tapping into the power of dopamine, psychologist Larry Rosen and his team at California State University Dominguez Hills are researching the effect technology has on our anxiety levels.

Gabe Zichermann: So one of the interesting things about gamification and other engaging technologies, is at the same time as we can argue that the neuroscience is being used to create dependent behavior those same techniques are being used to get people to work out, you know, using their Fitbit. So all of these technologies, all the techniques for engagement can be used for good, or can be used for bad.

Ramsay Brown: And they rejected it from the App Store because they told us any app that would encourage people to use other apps or their iPhone less was unacceptable for distribution in the App Store.

Meditation always struck me as the distillation of everything that was most annoying about the granola lifestyle. I pictured myself seated in an unbearable cross-legged position in a room that smells like feet. My attitude was not far from that of Alec Baldwin's character on \"30 Rock,\" who said, \"Meditation is a waste of time, like learning French or kissing after sex.\"

Turns out, meditation is the victim of a terrible PR. It's really just exercise for your mind -- bicep curls for your brain. And there's an explosion of recent science to back it up. A blockbuster MRI study from Harvard found that people who took an eight-week meditation course had thicker gray matter in the areas of the brain associated with self-awareness and compassion, while the regions associated with stress actually shrank.

You don't have to twist yourself into a cross-legged position -- unless you want to, of course. You can just sit in a chair. (You can also stand up or lie down, although the latter can sometimes results in an unintentional nap.) Whatever your position, you should keep your spine straight, but don't strain.

I cannot stress strongly enough that forgiving yourself and starting over is the whole game. As my friend and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg has written, \"Beginning again and again is the actual practice, not a problem to overcome so that one day we can come to the 'real' meditation.\"

Notice that I said the above steps are \"simple,\" but not easy. Repeatedly hauling your attention back from distraction takes grit, but it's worth it. Once you learn how to watch your breath without reactivity or judgment, you can start to do the same with anger, annoyance, impatience and all the other noxious impulses and urges that too often carry us away.

Start with five minutes a day. It's not a panacea, but it can help you in all sorts of ways -- from curbing your addiction to email to reducing mindless eating to being less frequently yanked around by your emotions. These benefits are why modern meditators include CEOs, elite athletes, marines, and me, a skeptical newsman. I've even written a book about it, called \"10% Happier,\" coming out next month.

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Another person was a hedge fund manager (a professional investor). I had written ten investing ideas for his hedge fund. He wrote back and invited me to lunch. Then we went to dinner. Then he invested money with me.

Business ideas. Book ideas. Article ideas. Ideas for other people, other businesses. If I had a business idea from the day before that I liked, then I would write ten ideas on how to create that business.

By writing ideas down, I was exercising the idea muscle. I was connecting all the creative parts of my brain and forcing them to light up in new ways. I could feel the dusty unused parts of my brain actually begin to come to life.

The point is NOT to have good ideas all the time. The point is just exercise. Exercise that idea muscle. Then you will be more creative, then you will know how to execute better than anyone else, you will feel abundant, life around you will seem like just a collection of ideas to be transformed, improved, created.

And a year after that I started a new business: a fund of hedge funds. Then two years later I started a new business, which combined my interests in writing, investing, and programming. I sold that business six months after I started it.

Do it for a year and it feels like you are a nuclear idea machine. Like you can be dropped off with no clothes and no wallet in the middle of the desert and come up with ideas to make a million dollars before you get home.

Imagine receiving $100 in your bank account - then someone takes it away. That pain hits harder than not having that money in the first place. That is what psychologists call loss aversion. In other words, the pain of losing something hurts twice as much as the pleasure of receiving it.

That feeling is something hackers like to exploit by offering you something nice and then threatening to take it away from you unless you do what they ask. In the context of this article, they might ask you to download something, send them your information, or click on a malicious link. Those are the hallmarks of a phishing scam.

Most people tend to be more responsive to people or institutions with an established level of authority. These could be government departments, banks, large corporations, or even public figures. That is the halo effect. Hackers abuse that bias by imitating those authority figures and drawing on your trust to create a false sense of security.

Imagine receiving an anonymous email with a link or attachment that contains tempting information, like payroll for the whole company, etc. Another example says your co-worker is involved in something scandalous, leading you to click a link or attachment for proof. Those are examples of hackers trying to take advantage of the curiosity effect. They want your curiosity to overpower your reasoning, and it can be very effective.

Unfortunately, there is no tool that can prevent hackers from using your brain against you. The only way to protect yourself from their tricks is to arm yourself and your team with the knowledge of how they are done and what they might look like and share it with everyone. Doing that can improve your chances of avoiding a costly security incident.

If you were to get your glucose from, say, dried fruit (a food in which the glucose is still attached to its fiber), the delivery curve of the fuel is extended. Add to your snack some protein, like raw nuts or jerky, and you extend the delivery curve further.

When I accepted the fact that my brain is not designed to operate at the same level all day long, or even for a few hours, I began using occasional recovery rituals. Tony Schwartz, CEO of The Energy Project, says the length of renewal is less important than the quality. Knowing that there may be limits to recovery you can engage in, here are a few tips, starting with simple things you can do at your desk:

The quickest way to interrupt your stress circuitry is yawning. Mark Waldman, of Loyola Marymount University, says yawning reduces hyperactivity in the frontal lobe and, combined with slow stretching and gentle stroking of your arms and hands, can help you enter a deep state of relaxation in 60 seconds or less.

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The use of mind-altering substances derived from plants dates back to ancient history.[7] Neurohackers use a class of chemical substances that improve higher order brain functions called nootropics. The term nootropics was first proposed in 1972 by Corneliu Giurgea, a Romanian chemist from University of Bucharest.[8]

A resurgence in the popularity of at-home and DIY neurohacking started in 2011.[1][14] The recent availability of brain stimulation devices contributed to the rise in the home neurohacking movement.[1] Individuals applied weak electrical currents to their brain in hopes of improving performance and productivity.[14] Since 2017, neurohacking devices have been available to the general public for unsupervised use. However, these methods of neurohacking have yet to gain widespread acceptance from the general public, and user retention rate for the devices remains low.[1][11]

In 2018, Marom Bikson and his colleagues at the City College of New York released a report to aid consumers in making an informed choice regarding the purchase of tDCS devices.[11] In particular, Bikson stated that the report hoped to educate consumers on the reasons why a significant price differentiation existed across the various devices on the market.

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