WIRED Staff

Project Goal: Build Your Own Neural Stimulator

Why wait for scientists to come up with a happiness-inducing brain stimulator when you can just build your own? That seems to be the idea behind a community online project geared toward developing a cheap transcranial magnetic stimulation device that could alter your mind. Essentially the OpenStim project — here — is geared toward "hacking […]

Why wait for scientists to come up with a happiness-inducing brain stimulator when you can just build your own? That seems to be the idea behind a community online project geared toward developing a cheap transcranial magnetic stimulation device that could alter your mind.

Essentially the OpenStim project -- here -- is geared toward "hacking your brain":

Our goal is to design a simple, safe, effective TMS device formodulation of emotion, sleep, attention, and other central nervoussystem properties. Many commercial entities sell TMS hardware andsoftware, often for prices exceeding $50,000. We will devise a TMS
device that will be constructable by a practitioner skilled inelectrical engineering, for less than $400.

The site also includes "protocols" for actually testing TMS devices.

So what's going on here? Is this for real? And if it is, could these devices be dangerous?

Drop me a line in the comments if you have expertise about TMS or if you have general thoughts about this project.

Meanwhile, I'm going to try and figure out who's behind it -- at the moment, my browser hangs while accessing a list of participants -- and report back in this space.