Foc.us is a company that makes headsets for gamers. Those headsets, starting to ship in July, send electricity through your brain. This is their pitch:
Overclock your brain using transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) to increase the plasticity of your brain. Make your synapses fire faster.Faster Processor, Faster Graphics, Faster Brain!If that sounds a little sketchy to you, that’s because it probably should.
The excellent NeuroBollocks blog explains how transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) is an interesting idea: sending targeted, low-level electric currents through the brain with TDCS excites certain regions, which could have implications in treating depression and stroke victims. Plug in a patient for 20 minutes, and you could get the effects for up to days at a time. So foc.us is marketing $249 headsets (“Maximum 2 headsets per order.”) that claim to “[e]xcite your prefrontal cortex,” thus improving your gaming ability. To the company’s credit, at least one study suggests hooking up a 9-volt to your skull could improve gaming ability, although that was all done in the lab, under professional supervision.
via Popular Science
