Thync: company launches mood-changing wearable that zaps brains

Controlled by an app and just released, the headset promises to calm or energise people

Andrew Griffin
Tuesday 02 June 2015 15:38 BST
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A newly-released headset hopes to wake people up or calm them down by manipulating the electricity in their brain.

Thync costs $299 and has just been released to the public. It provides “calm or energy on demand”, the company says, by using “neurosignalling” to activate nerves and change people’s state of mind.

The Thync looks like a small, white plastic triangle that is placed on the forehead. Its then fed with “Vibes” — specially-formulated zaps that either wake people up or calm them down.

The whole thing is controlled by phones. The zapping lasts an hour but the effects can go on for long after that, the company claims.

A number of different reviewers have tried the zapping, claiming that it really does wake up or put to sleep its users.

The launch comes in the context of the government’s new laws on “legal highs”, which some claimed had such excessive scope that they essentially banned everything.

But the text from the Queen’s Speech that announced it said that it banned “any substance intended for human consumption that is capable of producing a psychoactive effect” — and since the Thync works by manipulating electrical energy rather than a material substance, it should be allowed.

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