Thync, a Wearable That Zaps Your Brain To Calm You Down or Amp You Up

blottsie sends this first-hand report on how it felt to use a wearable device called Thync, which sends small amounts of electricity into your brain for the purpose of either calming you down or making you feel energized. While the unit I used isn't the finalized physical version, the best way to describe it is as a two-part device, one of which is fasted to the front of the right side of your temple, and one behind your right ear. It's not a helmet, which is what I absolutely assumed it would be. It's relatively discreet sort of dual patch system ... It didn't... hurt. Hurt isn't the right way to describe it. It felt like a tightness; it felt like the patch was trying to crawl across my skin. But — if you can believe this — in a good way. And while Thync was attached to the right side of my head, occasionally I felt 'tingles' pulling and hitting my brain on the left side and in the middle. I was feeling progressively awake and aware. Granted, I had patches stuck to my head sending gentle vibrations to my brain, so that might have been part of my sudden alertness. But still, after 20 minutes of Thync I just felt... better.

Comments

A new kind of drug?

[axlash]

If the devices like this really do end up working, they'd be doing what many recreational drugs do today.

I wonder what this would mean for the war on drugs...

Claims it felt good

[gurps_npc]

I think Larry Niven (and I am sure many others) wrote about a future where people got addicted to a device that electrically stimulated the pleasure centers of the brain.

Is this the beginning of our new addiction?

Life imitates art, as usual

[Minwee]

"Current addiction is the youngest of mankind's sins. At some time in their histories, most of the cultures of human space have seen the habit as a major scourge. It takes users from the labor market and leaves them to die of self-neglect.

Times change. Generations later, these same cultures usually see current addiction as a mixed blessing. Older sins -- alcoholism and drug addiction and compulsive gambling -- cannot compete. People who can be hooked by drugs are happier with the wire. They take longer to die, and they tend not to have children.

It costs almost nothing. An ecstasy peddler can raise the price of the operation, but for what? The user isn't a wirehead until the wire has been embedded in the pleasure center of his brain. Then the peddler has no hold over him, for the user gets his kicks from house current.

And the joy comes pure, with no overtones and no hangover.

-- Larry Niven, "The Ringworld Engineers", 1980

Re:Life imitates art, as usual

[OzPeter]

-- Larry Niven, "The Ringworld Engineers", 1980

It goes back a bit further than that. Death by Ecstasy, published 1968

Re:I'm pretty sure the FDA still has jurisdiction.

[StikyPad]

FWIW, they're apparently working with the FDA already.

Thync technology employs energy levels within the normal range of brain activity and we work with the FDA to assure product safety. Over 1,000 peer-reviewed published studies across more than 20,000 sessions further support the safety of our approach. http://www.thync.com/

And the FDA has already approved at least one such device, albeit for migraine treatment.
http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/...

Re:Blind experiment

[smellsofbikes]

Have a patch that doesn't actually apply voltage, but vibrates or something like that. User still feels like he/she is getting some sort of effect, but there's no brain-zapping involved.

In the Radiolab discussion, they were doing tests with the woman who was doing the sniper training, both with and without the system running. She thought her performance was about the same, but the people analyzing it said it was dramatically different, because among the things affected was her perception of time. She felt like she was playing the game until she got killed, which was maybe a matter of a minute or two, but when she was playing really well, she was playing for much longer periods of time and didn't realize it.
As I recall, they specifically compared it to programmers who talk about The Zone, where they're coding very effectively and have reduced perception of the passage of time, and making the claim that the two effects, of heightened efficiency and reduced perception of time passage, may be related.