Alcohol and coffee are about to get competition from a set of electrodes you wear on your head. Branded the Thync, the calming effect it produces is comparable to how you feel after an alcoholic drink, while the energising effect is similar to a cup of coffee, says Isy Goldwasser, the CEO and co-founder of this Silicon Valley-based startup. The company plans to start selling the device through its website in 2015.
Goldwasser envisages people using the Thync “vibes” to help them unwind after a long day at work, or to get a caffeine-free pick-me-up. “We are giving people a way to overcome a basic limitation – that no one is really wired to co-opt energy and calm on demand,” he says.
It doesn’t work for everyone though. About a third of people don’t have a strong response. When I try a prototype I feel a tingling where it makes contact with my skin, but no particularly serene feeling, even after a few sessions. The energising vibe also fails to do much for me.
Thync’s device uses a variation of what is called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), in which a constant low current is delivered to the head via electrodes,changing the activity of neurons in a specific area. Research has shown this approach can enhance various cognitive abilities and neuroscientists are busy pursuing applications for medical use. But Thync’s device is the first to be aimed at altering healthy people’s states of mind. It targets specific cranial nerves with unique electric waveforms. A session using the device lasts around 10 minutes and the effects can last for anywhere up to about 45 minutes. The device is operated via a smartphone, which allows the user to control the amount of current and the strength of the effect.
Thync has tested its prototype on about 3,000 people to date. The company has also sponsored a 100-person study by City College of New York focused on the calming effect. That showed a significant improvement in mood above and beyond both a placebo device and a similar tDCS device being developed to treat clinical pain and depression, though there was individual variation. “To their credit they have engineered something that, at least in this situation, produced a bigger change,” says Marom Bikson, a professor of biomedical engineering, who led the study.
But other experts raise concerns about the safety of such devices, including that placing them in the wrong area could result in harm. “This is the wild west for cognitive enhancing devices,” says Julian Savulescu, an ethicist at Oxford University who co-authored a report in April warning that many of the devices currently sold for enhancement purposes had not been closely regulated.
Goldwasser counters that the history of tDCS points to his device being safe. Tests to investigate how Thync’s vibes affect functions such as cognition have found no ill effects and it will also only be available for adults, a precautionary measure because children’s brains are developing, says Goldwasser. More vibes are in development, he says.
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