[Elise Hu] Hey, David! I'm "neuro-priming!"
[Hu] I'm getting my brain a little bit more plastic
so that when I do repetitive motor tasks I will —
my muscle memory will be better.
We are exploring the future of the human body
and what humans will be capable of in 2050.
Can we supercharge our brains
to learn new skills way faster
by simply wearing a mind-boosting headset?
How far can we surpass
our current physical and cognitive limitations,
and should we?
We're trying to find out in this Future You
with me, Elise Hu.
Hey y'all, I'm NPR's Elise Hu at NPR West in Culver City.
[Nate Rott] And I'm NPR's Nate Rott.
[Hu] I like how you're NPR's.
[Rott] I don't know! I don't like being theirs
but it's like— you said "say NPR."
They don't own me, I own —
[Hu] For the next 4 to 6 weeks we're gonna try vertical jump,
something I have no experience with.
But the reason we're gonna do it is
because I'm gonna do it with a brain-boosting headset—
a transcranial direct stimulation device —
and what it's supposed to do
is amp up my ability to learn motor skills faster.
Today is our first day.
We're gonna take our measurements without.
And Nate, for the next 4 to 6 weeks — you don't get a headset —
you get nothing.
So let's go!
First, we needed to measure my initial jump and Nate's.
[Casey Gutting] Boom!
About a dozen companies out there
promise to stimulate your brain to better performance,
but Halo is the leading device for improving motor skills.
It has contracts with the U.S. military
and U.S. Olympic teams, so I reached out.
I want to note that while the studies on zapping your brain
for better performance show it's plausible
and even encouraging,
there isn't enough of a body of clinical evidence yet
to indicate how much they actually improve performance.
That's not the question I'm asking.
I want to know how this technology
could change the way we live in the future.
With our initial jumps measured,
we headed outside for our first training session
with our trainer Casey.
Oh, we can make it. Let's do this!
Oh! Jeez!
The next training session with Casey will be my first one
while actually using the headset to prime my brain,
so let's find out how it works.
[Song] 101.
Neuroplasticity describes the brain's ability
to rewire and form neural connections based on experiences.
Your brain sends signals to your muscles
when you practice a task like
piano scales, golf swinging or jumping.
These signals fired by neurons create new connections
between brain cells, which help your muscles remember
how to do something.
Headsets like Halo use a process
called transcranial direct stimulation
to try and create those new connections faster.
TDCS is the process of firing tiny electric currents into your brain,
exciting the neurons in there.
These neurons are then more likely to fire together,
making new neural pathways.
One saying goes,
"neurons that fire together, wire together."
The idea here is transcranial direct stimulation
plus quality training equals faster learning.
Now back to our unscientific experiment.
Oh, it stopped!
I think I'm done priming!
[Music playing]
So today's the first day I'm actually neuro-priming.
[Gutting] Really?
[Hu] Cause I got it wrong the last couple of times. 
[Gutting] Oh, no kidding.
[Hu] This says neuro-priming in progress,
and then it gives me a countdown.
[Hu] Ahh! Ahh!
[Gutting] Whoo!
[Hu] All this jumping got me curious
how a professional athlete thinks about a headset like this.
So Halo put me in touch with
volleyball player and Olympic silver medalist Kim Glass.
[Kim Glass] Everyone wants a boost.
Everyone's looking for the next edge.
[Hu] So you got one and you decided to give it a try?
[Glass] Yeah, so they sent it to my house.
I go into the gym, I'm like super exhausted
and I just remember like the first day
I'm doing like kettlebell front squats
and I normally like 25 [lbs.]
And I was working on like — I had a little instability.
And to me like,
all of a sudden like it was just like,
everything was just a lot easier for me.
Now I don't know if it's, you know, this or not but ...
I felt better, I felt like I worked out longer.
I felt like I had more strength.
[Hu] I wasn't expecting to work out after interviewing Kim,
but she insisted on showing me how to "activate my glutes."
This is so painful!
OK, I can start neuro-priming.
[Rott] Is that an app that is testing your brain's ...
[Hu] So it's telling me that I'm neuro-priming.
[Rott] Is that what it's doing to your brain?
[Hu] Yeah, it's sending little currents to my brain.
[Rott] Do you feel anything?
[Hu] No.
And I just need to get the nibs right over my motor cortex.
I actually feel like, I feel —
a little bit of warmth.
This is it!
We're measuring our final jumps
to see if we've improved at all.
Before we jump though,
I talked with the Halo co-founder, Dr. Daniel Chao,
to understand the future of this technology
through our super scenarios.
[Song] In the year 2050.
First, I asked him what sort of superhuman power
neurostimulation could give us by the year 2050.
He thinks it could actually increase our lifespans.
Is it possible that this could keep our brains younger?
I mean, does this affect longevity?
[Dr. Dan Chao] So what if you live an active cognitive life?
What if starting in your 60s or 70s
you started doing brain training and this kind of thing,
crossword puzzles like this with brain stimulation,
and with every session you got a little lift in value
from that training session.
You keep doing that —
you've got a nice fat bank account to withdraw from
when you hit your 80s and 90s.
[Hu] How could a supervillain use this?
[Chao] Like, what could be truly villainous?
Like, what if it were hacked?
It's out there, everybody's using it.
Everything's in the cloud, this and that.
[Hu] But what's in the cloud when you're stimulating your brain?
Like, what would be hacked?
[Chao] So what if you change the stimulation?
You can flip the waveform so that it does the opposite.
[Hu] Oh no! You could take twice as long to learn things?
[Chao] Potentially. I mean, like —
we're having fun here, right — it's the year 2050.
[Hu] My favorite super scenario is where things get thorny.
If humans can be upgraded this much,
then are we creating different classes of humans?
Or even with athletes,
you know, there's asterisks
by those who used steroids.
[Chao] There's legal performance enhancement
that's all around us— like drinking coffee.
It's been identified by the World Anti-Doping Association
as performance enhancing, yet it's legal.
What WADA considers illegal is things that are unsafe
to the health of the athlete and against the spirit of the sport.
I would argue it is isn't.
[Hu] Sounds super thorny.
Let's sit on that for a moment
but then also think about something super likely.
[Chao] So 2050 — let's say we have a helmet,
and it's got electrodes all over the place
and you are learning French.
It's like OK, well, let's stimulate the language cortex
so that you can learn French faster.
And then it knows that you're in a meeting
'cause it reads your calendar.
It's like, all right, let's stimulate prefrontal cortex
for attention and focus.
Like, could you go through life
with the benefit of this neurostimulator
kind of knowing what you're doing
and stimulating parts of your brain to augment
like whatever neuro or cognitive capability in real time.
[Hu] So we're just getting little boosts throughout the day.
[Chao] Right.
[Hu] All right, thank you so much.
OK, now back to our
unscientific experiment.
Did my vertical jump increase?
Final jump day.
Ahh!
I just wanted a dramatic improvement,
and like an inch seems kind of disappointing I suppose.
But Casey thinks that it's still significant.
[Gutting] I think it's very significant.
You jumped over an inch higher than you did
five weeks ago, six weeks ago.
It's a solid improvement.
[Hu] I've spent so much of this episode in this headset
that I feel like I should wear it to close things up.
Overall we are still waiting
for more and more studies to come out
on the science behind this TDCS.
But I don't feel like anything at all.
It doesn't give me any sort of pain
or any effects that I can notice while I'm wearing it.
So if it does give me an extra edge, why not?
To follow along the future with us, you can follow us at
npr.org/future you.
And I always want to hear your feedback, so you can message me @elisewho
OK, for now, bye!
He keeps wanting us to jump up on those benches,
which is terrifying.
[Rott] Yeah, I mean, I kind of like my shins as they are.
[Hu] Laughing.
[Rott] With all the skin on them.
