There’s the Emora bracelet
, for instance. It uses light and colour to display your moods, and keeps a sort of diary.”Unlike fitness and medical wearables, the Emora translates each user’s unique heartbeat pattern into a mood-pulse light from electrocardiogram,” its press release explains. Feel, a similar device, tracks mood and coaches users on how to feel better. Both products are concerned with wellness, an increasingly trendy buzzword in Silicon Valley . There’s also Muse, a meditation headband; Dreem, to send you into a deeper, better sleep; and Thync, to get you over your sleeping pill habit. “These are differentTOOLS chasing the same end game: to make your brain as perfect as possible; to make you feel as good as you can feel; to become a more efficient human. Tracking is no longer enough, and all the charts and graphics mapping our bodies’ physical performance have grown boring; now we’re trying to fix our brains,” writes Molly McHugh in The Ringer.
But do these gadgets live up to their claims? McHugh tried out Thync–which uses transcranial direct current stimulation or weak electrical currents to target your nerves and send signal commands to your brain–for a week and noticed that she was sleeping better.
At first McHugh thought it was just a placebo effect so she used it for about a week in hotel rooms, on planes, at friends’ houses, and, of course, before going to bed. “Then, on night no. 4, I turned a corner. Within 15 minutes, I was struggling to keep my eyes open, my heartbeat getting slower and slower… I slept. I slept hard and deep and for more than eight hours -a feat I haven’t accomplished without pills for months.”
Her verdict: “As uncertain as we might be about how well any of it is working, it’s beginning to feel like we have no option but to try.”
