Gadget that changes user’s mood to make them happy

Forget your Garmin and your FitBit and all the other devices that monitor your vitals and tell you how many calories you’ve expended. The latest thing in wearables are devices that change your mood.

“These gadgets claim to be able to make you have more willpower, think more creatively and even jump higher. One day, their makers say, the technology may even succeed in delivering on the holy grail of emotions: happiness,” writes Ariana Eunjung Cha at The Washington Post.

This is not some new-age nutjobbery, though. There seems to be real science behind these devices. It involves stimulating key regions of the brain -with currents or magnetic fields -to affect emotions and physical well-being. It isn’t too different from how electroshock therapy works to counter certain mental illnesses and how deep-brain stimulation smoothes motion disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. “Indeed, recent studies have looked at the technique as a possible treatment for stroke, autism, and anorexia,” writes Cha.

But using electrical currents to change the way the brain behaves sounds dangerous and neuroscientists are rightly concerned.

According to Kevin Zaghloul, a brain scientist, even if the devices work as expected (which is a huge `if ‘), there are also concerns about how they account for individual variability in brain structure and whether enhancing one area of the brain could negatively affect another. Other scientists are even more worried, wondering if repeated usage can lead to overdose-like situations. And what happens if these devices become defective or are sabotaged? Very obviously, no one really knows the long-term consequences of using them.

These devices work via something called “transcranial direct current stimulation”. They send weak electrical currents that jolt neurons, which can increase or decrease the release of certain chemicals that can change the way a person is feeling.

Courtesy Washington Post