Thync is a headset device that uses electrodes to cheer you up

On Friday afternoons, one can file out of the office and grab a beer until the late hours of the following day, knowing well that they will have time to sleep it off. The anxiety from the other weekdays is a lot tricky to deal with. Hangovers are universally hated at work offices, with good reason. Enter Thync, a headset that will cheer you up by using electrodes to stimulate your head.

Isy Goldwasser, the CEO and co-founder Thync, a startup based in Silicon Valley, says that Thync produces a calming effect that is similar to how one feels after an alcoholic drink and its energising effect is similar to a cup of coffee. Thync functions at the intersection of neuroscience, consumer technology and wearable design.

Goldwasser imagines people using the Thync “vibes” to help them to slowly fade out a long day from their memory, or to cheer themselves 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.

While the headset has been tested on thousands of people and the result published in 100 papers, it does not work on everyone. Those people it fails to work are apparently in the minority. To date, Thync has tested its prototype on about 3 000 people.

The also company sponsored a 100 person study focusing on the calming effect. The results showed a significant improvement in mood above and beyond a placebo device and 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.

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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, has raised 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,” Savulescu writes.

Goldwasser argues that tests to investigate how Thync’s vibes affect functions such as cognition have not found any side effects. The device will only be available for adults, a precautionary measure because children’s brains are developing, says Goldwasser.

On its website, Thync claims that:

In developing Thync’s neurosignaling products, we continually measure the effectiveness of our technology by quantifying the results and outcomes from many studies. When evaluating our Vibes, we monitor biometric signals, assay psychophysiological variables and conduct psychometric evaluations. For example, we capture, record and analyze data such as heart rate, heart rate variability, galvanic skin response, pupil diameter, and EEG to quantify how Vibes influence both the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system.

Thync’s device uses a variation of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), in which a constant low current is delivered to the head via electrodes, altering 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 this is for the first time that Thync’s device is aimed at changing healthy people’s states of mind.

The way it does this is by targeting specific cranial nerves with unique electric waveforms. A single session using the device lasts around 10 minutes and its effect can last for up to 45 minutes. The current and the strength of the effect is controlled via a smartphone.