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By Laura Morales This post was written as part of a class assignment from students who took a neuroethics course with Dr. Rommelfanger in Paris in Summer 2016. Laura Morales is 21 years old and originally from Panama. She is currently a senior pursuing a double major in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology and Psychology in Emory University in Atlanta, GA. If you have ever heard a song that sends chills down your spine, relaxes your entire body and gives you a general feeling of being close to ecstasy, you have experienced the “high-like sensation” the makers of Nervana wish to tap into. The company Nervana has designed a set of headphones that, while playing music, transcutaneously send electrical signals into the left ear to stimulate the vagus nerve to match the frequency of the beat of the music. The vagus nerve is involved with activation of the parasympathetic nervous system , which is normally activated when the body is at rest. This nerve stimulation results in the release of n...

By Anna Wexler Anna Wexler is a PhD candidate in the HASTS (History, Anthropology, Science, Technology and Society) at MIT and a 2015-2016 visiting scholar at the Center for Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation focuses on the ethical, legal and social implications of emerging neuroscience technology, with a particular focus on the home use of noninvasive brain stimulation. Just when it seemed like the consumer neurotechnology market couldn’t get any stranger—after all, who would’ve expected that a sleek white triangle could be placed on the forehead for “calm” or “energy” vibes—two new products recently hit the market that further complicate the challenges of regulating this emerging market. Halo Sport is a brain stimulator marketed for athletic enhancement that utilizes technology similar to transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), while Nervana , which began taking pre-orders in March, is the first noninvasive vagus nerve stimulation ...