All of the Fun, None of the Workout 
 
 If you think about it, every company exhibiting at CES is trying to sell the same thing: happiness. But of the booths I visited last week at the yearly electronics trade show in Las Vegas, only one delivered directly on that promise. 
 
 Nervana (not to be confused with Nervana Systems), a startup founded by a team of medical professionals with day jobs as doctors and nurses, makes hardware that stimulates your brain to release dopamine, aka the happiness chemical. 
 
 The brain naturally responds to stimuli from exercise, music, sex, drugs, gambling, and other activities with a hit of dopamine, which makes us feel a rush of pleasure. Experts in women’s brain physiology say dopamine has special effects for women.Naomi Wolf summarizes their findings in her book, calling dopamine “the ultimate feminist chemical”, essential to a woman’s ability to feel confident and creative. 
 
 I tried Nervana with a few friends (I’ll refer to them as Conor, Joel, and Agustina since those are their names), and even though our sample size is small, we experienced happiness sensations that we believe resulted from the trial. 
 
 Conor and Joel said they felt an electric prickle when they first put on the headset, which intensified as they cranked up the volume and the intensity of their experience on the generator. The prickling persisted through the 15 or so minutes of music (you could choose from a list of 10 or so tracks that included Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, and ambient noise). For about an hour afterward, they both felt unusually calm and happy; Conor also claimed the device cured his hangover. 
 
 Agustina and I felt much more powerful sensations while trying Nervana, consistent with Naomi Wolf’s convictions about women’s reactions to dopamine. 
 
 “I felt the electricity go into my arm, and everything was tingling there, but the best moment for me was afterwards when I finished and stood up,” Agustina said. “I felt like I reached a personal high point. I couldn’t stop smiling or laughing. I was like, ‘Oh wow’. For about five minutes, my happiness level was a 10 out of 10. Then it got foggier, but I was still unusually happy for about an hour.” 
 
 My experience was close to Agustina’s, except possibly even fuller, since I cranked up the intensity on the generator to the maximum, so that I perceived waves of feeling caused by the stimulation even while the music was still playing. For me, the effect was so intense it felt beyond doubt that it was caused by the device. 
 
 If Nervana does what it claims (and what we experienced subjectively), the potential benefits are almost limitless, ranging from recreational to therapeutic. Not only could it be used as a therapy on people suffering with depression, anxiety, and probably a host of other disorders, it could also potentially replace party drugs like molly by delivering a high and enhancing the immersive quality of music without posing the health risk. 
 
 “Taking something that basically poisons our bodies can be deadly, unfortunately, but Nervana can enhance the pleasure of music without any drugs,” said Dr. Daniel Cartledge, one of the MD’s on the founding team. “I think this could add great entertainment value to music festivals.” 
 
 We conducted our own science experiment 
 
 One of Nervana’s greatest challenges is to prove objectively that the product works. Its founders haven’t discovered a way to quantify the amount of dopamine in the brain at a given time. They don’t have any means of gathering quantitative data other than users self-reporting happiness on a standard mood scale. 
 
 Luckily, Conor and Joel happen to be the cofounders (and CEO and president, respectively) of Open BCI, a brain-computer interface company that produces the Ultracortex: a device you can wear on your head that monitors your brain activity. 
 
 So we decided to use the Ultracortex to test the Nervana experience. Conor wore the Ultracortex, which collected his EEG data before, during, and after the stimulation. Since Open BCI collects data, but doesn’t analyze it, we’re still waiting for the official results to come back from the experts. 
 
 Joel watched Conor’s EEG on a monitor while he was being stimulated, and said that although no huge changes were easily perceptible to a casual observer, he might’ve seen an increase in the frequency of alpha waves during Nervana. 
 
 “There may have been some more alpha wave activity in the 25-30 hertz range,” Joel said, “but watching it live, it’s difficult to know.” 
 
 Here’s where the cofounders explain everything to me. And sex. 
 
 I spoke with two of the cofounders, its nurse CEO Ami Brannon and electrical engineer Gregory Mayback, about just what it was exactly that they’d done to my brain. (Note: The interview has been condensed and edited for brevity and clarity.) 
 
 Me: Want to explain what you just did to me for the past 15 minutes? 
 
 Ami: We have a device that sends an electrical signal through the ear canal to stimulate the release of dopamine in your brain. There’s an electrical signal that’s paired with music. It follows the beat of the music, and and it makes it really pleasant. Through a conductive earbud, it sends a message through the vagus nerve in your ear, which sends a message to the brain to release dopamine, your feel-good neurotransmitter that naturally occurs in the brain. 
 
 Me: What’s the vagus nerve, and how does it tell my brain to release dopamine? 
 
 Ami: The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in your body, and through it, we can access the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part of the nervous system that helps the body to relax and feel good. It elicits those warm feelings like when you feel love. Dopamine is commonly associated with the feeling of being in love. We kind of tickle the nerve to remind it to send out some dopamine. 
 
 Me: Is there any danger to stimulating the vagus nerve to produce dopamine when it wouldn’t necessarily do so, or more often than it would naturally? 
 
 Ami: No. There are actually several decades of science behind vagus nerve stimulation. Historically, vagus nerve stimulators have only been implanted through surgery. Our team is made up of physicians, medical researchers, and engineers who knew about the vagus nerve implant surgery, and that the nerve stimulates a nice feeling. So bringing that feeling to consumers without the surgery was our goal from the beginning. 
 
 Me: Wow, I’ve never heard of a vagus nerve implant surgery. What kind of person gets a surgery like that, to treat what kind of condition? 
 
 Ami: The surgery has been used as a treatment for epilepsy, depression, obesity, and more. Recently a surgically implanted vagus nerve stimulation device got FDA indications for obesity. But those are medical devices. We’re a lifestyle and wellness device, and we’re not seeking FDA approval or making medical claims. 
 
 Me: And yet, you clearly think this would be of interest to people suffering from certain medical conditions, as consumers. Tell me about that. 
 
 Ami: As a company we’ll eventually look at delving into the medical device world. I think universities will be very interested in using this. They haven’t been able to to treat patients effectively since often surgery isn’t an option. 
 
 Me: Honestly if I had one of these sets I’d be doing this every day. Are you sure there isn’t any harm in doing this over and over? How often do you guys do it? 
 
 Ami: Based on all the literature that’s out there, there’s really no harm. We actually don’t have a device ourselves right now, but the engineers building the devices try them out all the time. We start pre-sale of the device in the next week or two on our site, and then we’ll be delivering it in the spring. The price point is $299, which we think is pretty reasonable. 
 
 Me: Explain to me the connection to music. I was encouraged to turn the music to the highest volume that was enjoyable, I cranked up the intensity, and I started noticing the effects as the beat dropped. Is that what you expected? 
 
 Greg: Yes, that’s the intent of adding it to music. The signal rides the wave of the music itself. The music is playing at a particular frequency, the the signal follows the rhythm. Every once in a while, it’ll be off because it happens to be following one instrument rather than another, but it follows in a pleasurable way. 
 
 Me: Do you need music in order to have the experience? 
 
 Greg: No, you just need to be wearing the headset. 
 
 Ami: It’s a very personal device, you can completely adjust the settings. You can kind of play around with the settings, like, do I want to feel more intense signal? Do I feel that good feeling more if I increase the signal or do I just want a little mild setting? 
 
 Me: I can see so many applications of this at festivals and concerts. Have you thought about that? 
 
 Ami: We do have a mode on the generator called ambient mode. We have the microphone on there, so that if you’re at a festival, everyone can get the same signal at the same time all listening to the same DJ or whatever. 
 
 Me: I’ve got to ask you guys about drugs. Any comments on how the experience of this compares, potentially, to a substance like ecstasy or MDMA? 
 
 Greg: I couldn’t comment because I just drink alcohol. 
 
 Me: Ok, what about sex? Have you thought about demoing Nervana with sex? 
 
 Ami: Yes! We talk about it all the time, but we haven’t been able to decide yet who gets to go first. We all volunteer. I think there’s an applicability there, heightening the pleasure experience in what already is a good thing. We started off being a device to help you relax, but in what situation is pleasure better than when you’re relaxed? So sex is definitely at the top of our list. 
 
 Me: Would you ever consider this within the realm of augmented reality (AR)? 
 
 Greg: Oh sure, absolutely. Why wouldn’t it be? When you talk about virtual reality, you’re talking about five or six senses, depending on who you are. But when you’re looking and feeling something, why wouldn’t you also want to, like, hear a truck go by and have a signal there that makes you feel something different? ||||| Vagus nerve stimulation is nothing new, although it's more commonly done with a surgical implant that's akin to shoving a pacemaker into your brain. There is one device that's similar to Nervana, NEMOS, which is currently used to treat epilepsy in certain people. Nervana is similar-looking to the other device, looking like a slightly geeky guitar pedal with four buttons and a large wheel in the center. Inside, there's a 9V battery that promises to offer 30 hours of use before needing to be swapped out. While it's entirely possible to undergo this therapy without music, company CEO Ami Brannon says that the addition of tunes makes the process more enjoyable. 
 
 
 
 According to the team, the device harnesses beat-heavy music and sends out the electrical pulses in time with the tune. For the demo, my phone's music library was scanned, with AC/DC's Back in Black considered suitable for the test. I had to connect my music player to Nervana via a 3.5mm male-male cable, and the feed is pushed out via special headphones. The left earphone contains a pair of electrodes that, via an earbud made of conductive silicon, sends the electricity through the corresponding ear canal. 
 
 It took a lot of trial and error to get to the point where the stimulation was working, and having Back in Black screaming at high volume certainly wasn't conducive to a relaxing environment. Then again, when the system began to work, I could certainly feel some sensation, although nothing too discomforting. After about 14 minutes, I did feel a mild sense of elation that lasted until I shut down the device, and for the next five minutes, I was a little spaced out. 
 
 
 
 At last year's CES, I helped test out Thync, a wearable that was designed to calm you down or get you pumped up for a big day. Similar to that device, it's hard to know at first blush if the sensations that I felt were genuine or simply a byproduct of the environment. After all, sitting down and listening to 15 minutes of music, drowning out the din of a loud and busy trade show, could probably make you feel similar levels of relaxation. With all of these things, it's impossible to say if their effective without significant testing under less chaotic conditions. 
 
 If you're looking to try it for yourself, I'm told that the device will be available for sale at some point in the second quarter of the year. It'll retail for $299, and the company has promised me that it's already looking at ways to make finished product significantly more elegant than what's available today. ||||| The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the marketing of an electronic medical device intended to treat migraine headaches. 
 
 In an announcement released Tuesday, officials said the transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, or TENS, device was the first ever to receive such approval. 
 
 The device, which will be marketed under the name Cefaly, is manufactured by Cefaly Technology of Belgium. 
 
 "Cefaly provides an alternative to medication for migraine prevention," read a prepared statement from Christy Foreman, director of the Office of Device Evaluation at the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health. "This may help patients who cannot tolerate current migraine medications for preventing migraines or treating attacks." 
 
 Migraine headaches affect roughly 10% of the population and are characterized by intense, throbbing head pain. Migraines can last for just a few hours or as long as several days and are often accompanied by nausea and extreme sensitivity to light and noise. According to the National Institutes of Health, they are three times more common in women than in men. 
 
 The FDA described Cefaly as a "portable, battery-powered, prescription device that resembles a plastic headband worn across the forehead and atop the ears." 
 
 The device uses a self-adhesive electrode to apply electrical current to the skin, which can be felt as a tingling sensation. The manufacturer says the current stimulates the trigeminal nerve, which is responsible for facial sensations and has been linked to migraines. 
 
 A Belgian clinical study found that the device did not completely prevent migraines, nor did it reduce the intensity of those that did occur. However it did reduce the number of days each month that migraine sufferers experienced attacks compared with patients who received only a placebo, the FDA said in its release. 
 
 The clinical study involved 67 patients who suffered more than two migraine headaches a month. 
 
 Also, a patient satisfaction survey of more than 2,300 users of the device in France and Belgium suggested that just over half of them were satisfied with the product and were willing to continue use. 
 
 Complaints included "dislike of the feeling and not wanting to continue using the device, sleepiness during the treatment session, and headache after the treatment session," the FDA announcement said. 
 
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 Black boys facing chronic adversity show signs of early genetic aging ||||| Weighed down, fumbling through the world with tunnel vision, unable to shake the ringing in my ears, I aged about 50 years in five minutes at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. 
 
 On Jan. 5, insurance company Genworth Financial unveiled a robotic exo-suit that shows wearers just what it feels like to be old. 
 
 The R70i was created by design firm Applied Minds, whose co-founder, Bran Ferren is the former president of Disney’s Imagineers. To try it out, you have to put on something that feels a lot like a wetsuit—the technicians backstage told me it’s necessary because “you’re going to sweat.” You’re then strapped tightly into the exo-suit, which weighs more than it looks like it does. 
 
 The system uses an Oculus virtual reality headset and giant headphones to block out your natural vision and hearing, and replace them with distorted versions of reality. Before I even made it to the demonstration area with Ferren, I was not entirely in control of my movements. A “spotter” helped me across the convention center floor. 
 
 Ferren had me stand still—one of the few things I could still do in this suit—and asked what I could see. Using a wireless system connected to the suit, he slowly reduced my field of vision, blurring out the sides, then the middle, and then showing me what it felt like to have cataracts. 
 
 He did the same for my hearing, first giving me tinnitus—which, thanks to the unending parade of slot machines, demo booths and taxis in Las Vegas, I’m not entirely sure has actually gone away—then slowing down and repeating the audio that I was hearing in the headphones, making it difficult to even recite the words to “Mary had a little lamb.” 
 
 Quartz/Dan Frommer Relieved to be done with the tests. 
 
 Then the real tests came. Ferren put me on a treadmill, asking me to walk at a slow pace. It was difficult, but I could keep it up for a while. A monitor broadcast my heart rate on a screen next to me for all to see. Then Ferren gave me the legs of a 100-year-old, slowing me down as if I were walking through waist-high mud. My heart rate spiked. 
 
 He changed the settings to show me how difficult it is walk with a damaged hip, and I found myself careening to the side of the treadmill. Thankfully, the torture of aging ended there and I was returned to my semi-youthful state. Ferren asked how I felt, and I told him I now fear getting old. 
 
 “The alternative is far worse,” he responded. 
 
 The aim of the suit, says Ferren, is to show people that we need to pay greater attention to the effects of aging on those close to us. It’s difficult to empathize with pain you can’t see, or debilitations that aren’t readily apparent. The R70i could also theoretically be used for the opposite result, he said: To return mobility and senses to the elderly. 
 
 In countries like Japan, where over a quarter of the population is older than 65, there’s a great need to build systems that guarantee care for the elderly. Multiple Japanese companies are working on exo-suits to improve the human body, so it may not be long before Ferren’s claim becomes a reality. But hopefully, the day our clothes give us superhuman robotic strength, they won’t make us look like extras from Tron. 
 
 *This post has been updated with a video.
– A new company that's betting there's a big market out there for folks who'd like to, say, enjoy a runner's high without having to, well, run are about to unleash a new device that could very well induce a dopamine high. Florida-based Nervana, a wearable tech company run by nurses, doctors, and engineers, is about to take pre-orders for its $299 electric headphones with an anticipated spring delivery, reports Discovery. But the science is still out: While Nervana reports that its proprietary earbud tech sends electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve by way of the ear canal to stimulate feel-good hormones like dopamine, the company calls it a "lifestyle and wellness" device instead of a medical device, thereby sidestepping rigorous scientific inquiry, FDA approval, and the like. Anecdotally, early reviews are somewhat divided. The folks who tried the device out for Futurism at the Consumer Electronics Show this week had only praise; the writer notes that dopamine has "special effects" for women and goes so far as to confess, "Honestly if I had one of these sets I'd be doing this every day." Engadget writer Daniel Cooper, meanwhile, describes his 15 minutes with the headphones differently, having felt only a "mild sense of elation that lasted until I shut down the device, and for the next five minutes, I was a little spaced out." He notes the elation may have simply been due to the fact that he'd been given momentary respite from the loud din of a trade show. (Check out other notable gizmos at this year's CES.)