Will 2015 Be The Year Our Smartphones Link Up To Our Brains?

Provided by Popular Science The Boston office of Thync, its interior walls covered in scribbles of dry-erase marker, exudes the youthful energy of any tech startup. But theres one noticeable departure from the typical startup visible just as I walk in the front door: a sign notifying study participants to please take a seat: someone will be with them shortly. Over the course of an hour, a handful of these participants, mostly college-aged, cycle through Thyncs offices, where they will fasten electrodes to their heads and become another data point in the companys growing body of neurological knowledge.

Thync bills itself first and foremost as a neuroscience company. Its sole productslated for release later this yearis a smartphone-controlled wearable device that will allow the user to actively alter his or her brains electrical state through transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The big idea: give users active influence over their brain chemistries, and therefore their moods, their anxiety, and even their mental productivityan app that can conjure feeling of calm and tranquility or dial up a users attention and focus on demand.

Its the kind of technology thats been long promised but never delivered, a melding of consumer electronics and human biology that smacks of fantasy futurism. But nearly 2,000 people have already logged thousands of hours with Thyncs device in scientific trials. Thats what Thyncs founders believe differentiates their company from the many brain-interfacing technologies that have fizzled before it, and why a rotating cast of test subjects--including me--are at Thyncs offices today with small electrodes stuck to our heads. Were part of the science that Thyncs researchers believe will deliver the first real brain-interfacing consumer product before the end of the year.

Were in uncharted territory, its a new frontier, and people are going to be skeptical, says Issy Goldwasser, Thyncs co-founder and CEO. We want to make sure we have something real. So the company has from its outset been about the science, and thats important.

Thyncs other co-founder and chief science officer, Jamie Tyler, puts it another way. This company started as a science experiment, he says, which is to say it started with a technological outcome rather than a specific product in mind. Goldwasser sought out Tyler, who at the time was doing some envelope-pushing research into ultrasounds effects on the brain. The duo launched Thync in late 2011 to explore how ultrasound could be used to stimulate certain regions of the brain to produce specific responses, with the ultimate aim of integrating ultrasound into a brain-interfacing device.

Ultimately the ultrasound efforts foundered, and they turned to tDCS, or transcranial direct current stimulation. The technology, which involves stimulating targeted brain regions with low-current pulses of electricity, was, they concluded, consumer-ready.

Since then, Thync has grown to 20 full-time staff, collected roughly $13 million in venture funding, and produced a closely-guarded prototype of a consumer device that, Tyler says, is easy to use and works for the vast majority of people. With just a couple of electrodes stuck on the temple and at the back of the neck, Thyncs tDCS device delivers specially-designed waveforms of electricityThync calls these waveforms vibesto specific regions of the cranium.

These customized vibes are Thyncs secret sauce; the resulting mild shift in the brains electric state can reduce stress and anxiety or call up a persons best stuff on demand, Tyler says. And thats really just the beginning. Thync plans to launch its app with two vibes, Calm and Energy, but as the technology (and the science) progresses, more vibes for more feelings could be on the way.

Tyler, Goldwasser, and the rest of the Thync team are adamant that the technology works, and are themselves daily users of the prototype Thync technology. To prove it, theyve done extensive in-house research (hence the collegiate-types rotating through the front office) as well as contracted a third-party chronic-use study with City College of New York.

Conducted in the lab of Biomedical Engineering Professor Marom Bikson at City College New York, subjects were given tDCS stimulation via Thyncs device, a conventional clinical tDCS device, or sham stimulationtDCS that wasnt targeted in any specific way but, in terms of the tactile feel, indistinguishable from real tDCS. One hundred test subjects underwent stimulation as many as five times a day, four times per week, for six weeks running.

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Will 2015 Be The Year Our Smartphones Link Up To Our Brains?