04 Perform at Your Peak

“Our current situation has placed unusual pressure on our brains”

There’s a lot of buzz around the idea of zapping your brain through your scalp to enhance its abilities – according to PubMed, more than 6,900 scientific papers on transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) have been published since 2011. One common target of TES machines is the motor cortex, at the top of the skull. Researchers have stimulated this area to boost motor learning and help recovery after brain injuries. Inevitably, companies are now claiming that you can strap on a stimulator at home and, say, improve your running.

Neuroscientist Dr Murali Doraiswamy, an MH advisor, cautions that home TES devices aren’t calibrated well enough and aren’t sportspecific. “Every part of the brain is precious,” he says.

“If you’re off by even a millimetre, you may be stimulating a wrong circuit with unintended consequences.” Those range from burned skin to seizures.

A better option would be a product that uses your own mental effort to improve performance, such as a meditation app or a training enhancer like Rewire (rewirefitness. app). This app and button system is based largely on research by the scientist Samuele Marcora, who has shown that both physical fatigue and cognitive fatigue exhaust the same circuit. By training them at once, it is thought that you can strengthen your sports performance, or at least your ability to multitask. Above all, remember that our current situation has placed unusual pressure on human brains. Keep that old healer’s oath in mind: first, do no harm.