Open question: Can coffee & Ritalin’s mental effects be delivered, safely, over a smartphone?

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Will 2015 be the year our smart­phones link up to our brains? (Pop­u­lar Science):

“Thync bills itself first and fore­most as a neu­ro­science com­pa­ny. Its sole product—slated for release lat­er this year—is a smart­phone-con­trolled wear­able device that will allow the user to active­ly alter his or her brain’s 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 productivity—an app that can con­jure feel­ing of calm and tran­quil­i­ty or dial up a user’s atten­tion and focus on demand. It’s the kind of tech­nol­o­gy that’s been long promised but nev­er deliv­ered, a meld­ing of con­sumer elec­tron­ics and human biol­o­gy that smacks of fan­ta­sy futurism…

…in test­ing Thync’s “Ener­gy Vibe,” sub­jects expressed indi­ca­tors con­ven­tion­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with increased focus and atten­tion, var­i­ous­ly describ­ing the effect as equiv­a­lent to a cup of cof­fee or, at peak, a small dose of Ritalin…

But all of this data and the under­ly­ing science…is Thync’s own. Its device and research has yet to be peer-reviewed or endorsed by oth­ers in the neu­ro­science com­mu­ni­ty or—critically—the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion. It’s cur­rent­ly unclear if Thync’s device would require licens­ing by the FDA as a med­ical device, but Tyler says the team is work­ing with the agency.”

Learn more:

• Start-up Thync rais­es $13 mil­lion to mar­ket tran­scra­nial stim­u­la­tion via con­sumer wearable
• Tran­scra­nial Direct Cur­rent Stim­u­la­tion (tDCS) as depres­sion treat­ment: much promise, some DIY risks
• Info­graph­ic on the Dig­i­tal Brain Health Mar­ket 2012–2020
• Upcom­ing event on ther­a­peu­tic and non-ther­a­peu­tic uses of non-inva­sive neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion devices