In the midst of being charged that by 20 masked men to arm with rifles and explosives, Sally Adi was able to calmly and smoothly shoot down all of her attackers one by one. Sally didn't entirely grasp what had happened from her perspective. The 20 minute skirmish lasted only a few moments, and when it was over, she asked, how many did I get?

Not realizing she had successfully taken down all 20 men. This was very impressive, considering Sally is not a sniper, but a journalist. And this was only the second time she had been in a situation like this. After all this took place in a battlefield simulator in a training facility for snipers. And Sally's first run on the simulator, she panicked, was overwhelmed by how many enemies there were and jammed her rifle several.

What made the difference was that in the second run, she had a transcranial direct current stimulator strapped to her head. This is basically a helmet that runs an electrical current through your brain with the aim of enhancing cognitive performance. In a February, 2012 issue of new scientists, Sally described being hooked up to the brain helmet as a near spiritual experience.

She said that the thing that made the earth drop out from under my feet was that for the first time in my life, everything in my head finally shut. There was suddenly this incredible silence in my. The purpose of the transcranial stimulator was actually to shortcut the subject into achieving an elusive mental state known as flow a term popularized by Hungarian psychologist Mihai Mihai is a state of effortless concentration, optimal performance, and as Mihai puts, it is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.

And it usually occurs when a person's body or mind is stressed to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. This is something that may be experienced by an athlete during a competition, a musician trying to nail a difficult piece, or even someone working on a project trying to meet a deadline with only hours to spare.

In his book titled Flow Mihai describes how skilled people like artists chess, masters. And even surgeons who, when sufficiently challenged, will literally lose their selves in the activity. Like Sal ad all data irrelevant to the task at hand, including the sense of self and the chatter in the head that comes with it ceased to exist.

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