How to Hack Your Brain: Neurotech
I remember sitting in a US hotel room in 2014 with my old housemate, watching an advert for America’s bestselling antidepressant. As the voiceover started rattling off the side effects, we looked at each other in horror and started laughing. Abilify, a powerful antipsychotic that was also being prescribed at the time to treat mild depression, had a list of side effects as long as your arm. Your arm, which if you’re on Abilify, may be covered in hives, spasming uncontrollably or flopping uselessly behind you as you dizzily try and make your way to the bathroom to relieve your constipation. These are but a few of the genuine side effects of the drug, which also include anxiety and depression, the very ailments they’re meant to be helping, with the sudden urge to gamble thrown in – a lovely bonus prize. But take just a snapshot of its sales into account: from April 2013 - March 2014, Abilify, aka apriprazole, sold almost $6.9 billion worth of units.
The pharmaceutical industry continues to march down its gilded path like an unstoppable, froth-mouthed automaton incapable of discerning human casualty from a haplessly discarded receipt for multivitamins, and that’s great for the beast. But what about the people who find that the side effects to the pill they’ve just taken are just as bad, if not worse, than the disease they’re trying to treat? Or for people chugging down over-the-counter stimulants in an effort to hack their brains and optimise their performance?
Neurostimulation experts have known for decades that the brain is like a computer circuit, replete with wiring and processing centres and that light electrical charges passed over the brain can help control pain, alleviate physical ticks, improve learning and even stabilise moods. Things have come a long way since the smoking B-movie-style electrodes we may think of when we picture a neurostimulator. And thankfully even further away from the first century Roman physician, Scribonius Largus’, electric torpedo fish that he used to treat headaches with. Nowadays, neuropace implantable technology is FDA approved and helping thousands of people with epilepsy, while deep brain stimulation (DPS) via tiny electrodes in the brain, has shown proven results in helping people with Parkinson’s and dystonia.
But for those of us without these conditions, the future is wearable. Originally hoping to find a performance-enhancing product for gamers, UK-based neurostimulation company Foc.us used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) delivered via electrodes placed on the scalps of volunteers to see how they played during a battle-simulation video game. The volunteers who received a larger tDCS dose performed twice as well as those who didn’t. While studies on learning and memory carried out by other neurostimulation experts have shown that participants using tDCS were able to memorise and recall new piano chords 40% faster than the control. These gains were not just short term – a month later, subjects were still able to demonstrably recall their newfound skills.
Companies such as Halo sell neurotech, which look just like headphones, for under $400. Using tDCS for just 20 minutes to ‘prime’ the brain before physical activity, the company claims increased plasticity in the brain, decreasing the amount of input required for neurons to fire, resulting in increased strength, explosiveness, endurance, and muscle memory.
With an increasing number of studies released by brands such as Thync, Foc.us and Neurovalens revealing benefits such as improved strength and fitness, weight loss, reduced symptoms from anxiety and depression, improved sleep and better energy levels from tDCS, in the very near future one wearable neurotech device could be all you need to be to rule them all.
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