Consumer neurotechnology

Q&A: What does the Facebook acquisition of CTRL-Labs mean for Neurotechnology and Augmented & Virtual Reality?

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While sit­ting at din­ner with an unsus­pect­ing friend, my phone blew up with odd­ly-late mes­sages from fel­low neu­rotech­nol­o­gy com­rades. CTRL-Labs announced their impend­ing acqui­si­tion by Face­book and inte­gra­tion into Face­book Real­i­ty Labs (respon­si­ble for Ocu­lus et al.), for enough mon­ey to buy my guilt-induc­ing­ly-expen­sive New York cof­fee for a mea­ger 550,000 years. Woah—so very many ques­tions. I fig­ured I’d share [Read more…] about Q&A: What does the Face­book acqui­si­tion of CTRL-Labs mean for Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy and Aug­ment­ed & Vir­tu­al Reality?

Important insights on the growing home use of tDCS brain stimulation: older-than-expected users, positive self-reported results for treatment of depression but negative for self-enhancement, and a couple areas of concern (severe burns, frequency)

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Dr. Brent Williams is wear­ing a home­made tDCS device while his wife Madge is sport­ing a com­mer­cial mod­el. Pho­to by Kevin Liles/kevindliles.com

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At the 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit last month, researcher and sci­ence writer Dr. Anna Wexler dis­cussed some fas­ci­nat­ing insights from her sur­vey of 339 home (or “do-it-your­self”) users of tDCS (tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion) devices.

The sur­vey results have just been pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Cog­ni­tive Enhance­ment (details below), and pro­vide a use­ful win­dow into who pur­chas­es tDCS devices and why, how they use them and what results they see. [Read more…] about Impor­tant insights on the grow­ing home use of tDCS brain stim­u­la­tion: old­er-than-expect­ed users, pos­i­tive self-report­ed results for treat­ment of depres­sion but neg­a­tive for self-enhance­ment, and a cou­ple areas of con­cern (severe burns, frequency)