Start-up Thync raises $13 million to market transcranial stimulation via consumer wearable

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Thync gets $13 mil­lion to send elec­tric cur­rents to your brain (SFGate):

“Thync, a Los Gatos start­up, is work­ing on a wear­able that’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from most: it would send fine elec­tric cur­rents through the brain to alter users’ state of mind…some ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists are on-board with the unusu­al vision: on Wednes­day, it said it has raised $13 mil­lion from Khosla Ven­tures and oth­er investors.

Thync says it has cre­at­ed the first wear­able that uses “neu­rosig­nal­ing algo­rithms” to stim­u­late brain cir­cuits that in turn evoke ener­gy, calm and focus.

It’s unclear how strict­ly the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion would gov­ern the device, since the com­pa­ny isn’t mak­ing med­ical claims but instead pitch­ing the device for mood-alter­ing qual­i­ties, akin to caf­feine and alcohol.”

(Accord­ing to the com­pa­ny web­site, they were “Found­ed on decades of research and results using tran­scra­nial pulsed ultra­sound (tPU), tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS) and oth­er tran­scra­nial elec­tri­cal stim­u­la­tion (tES) methods.”)

To learn more:

• Good sur­vey of brain stim­u­la­tion meth­ods, val­ue and limitations
• 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th, 2014)
• Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry: Info­graph­ic on the Dig­i­tal Brain Health Mar­ket 2012–2020