Brain shock treatment for academic gain: the potential dangers The researchers say: "When used within suggested guidelines, the acute safety risks (of seizures, for example) seem very low. There is a danger that it can be tried out ad hoc on adults and children - especially on vulnerable patient groups seeking help with serious and currently intractable developmental disorders (such as autism, epilepsy, dyscalculia, dyslexia or schizophrenia) - before enough is known about potential psychological side effects, about the appropriate method of stimulating (for example, the optimal duration and location of stimulation) and about how psychological training protocols can be designed that are selective for the desired effects. As little is yet known about the best ways to utilise TDCS, there is no training program or licensing regime for clinicians applying the technique. Inadequately trained clinicians might misidentify suitable sites for stimulation - an important issue as different cognitive abilities may be subserved by different brain areas at different stages across the lifespan. They might also fail to ensure that stimulation parameters are within safety guidelines. For example, repeated stimulation of the parietal cortex in order to increase numerical competence during developmental stages when the prefrontal cortex is more important might not only fail to give any improvement but it could even worsen performance and lead to atypical brain development. Like other types of atypical experience during sensitive periods, the stimulation of the wrong brain area might induce abnormal patterns of brain activity in this brain region and interconnected areas, and increase metabolic consumption in brain areas that are irrelevant to the specific psychological function. Hence, research into the safety and potential hazards of TDCS in children is urgently needed. Researchers also claim there are doubts over whether the technique should be used on the developing brains of young people. They believe that enhancing abilities in one part of the brain could impact on the capabilities of other parts. To date, most research on cognitive enhancement has focused on improving average or impaired abilities. However, such enhancement may come at a cost in some cases. Highly-developed capacities I certain cognitive domains in some individuals are accompanied by reduced functioning in others. It would be premature to allow children, or their parents, to make the choices that lead to higher functioning in one domain (such as language) at a cost to functioning in other valuable domains (such as face recognition), as they might lack understanding of the ways in which the development of cognitive abilities may depend on earlier cognitive functions, as well as on brain organisation. This could lead to parents being tempted to use the treatment to improve their children's academic ability in one area at the expense of another. "Depending on how bad the negative effects of an enhancement are, it might be appropriate to block parents" access to the enhancement. Those involved in the professional use of TDCS should not facilitate the choices of parents if the side effects are sufficiently bad, or sufficiently ill understood. If TDCS does enhance some abilities at a cost to others, then assessing its ethical permissibility will involve weighing its costs and benefits.