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Direct-to-consumer neurotechnology is all the rage. A quick Google search will reveal devices that promise to accelerate learning, promote weight loss, improve sleep, and treat depression, just to name a few. The number of new patents for brain health technologies, which include both mental health apps and devices that monitor or stimulate the brain, exploded over the last decade—and are now worth billions of dollars.
Dozens of companies are selling wearable neurotechnologies—gadgets that typically work by either recording brainwaves using electroencephalography (EEG) or by stimulating the brain with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Despite wide-ranging claims about their benefits, many of these devices lack the evidence to back them up, according to a paper published last month (May 22) in Neuron by University of British Columbia neuroethicist Judy Illes and her colleagues.
We don’t have unequivocal scientific evidence that this brain stimulation technique [can] change cognitive ...
