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

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?

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.