(mellow music)
- Probably the most difficult aspects
of an Ironman distance race is how hard it is
to stay focused for eight hours.
So you can be out there a long time.
It all comes down to staying in the moment.
(upbeat music)
- Five years ago I would have said the brain is very much
an untapped frontier in the science of performance.
Now not so much.
(water splashes)
One of the big limiting factors is getting the most you can
out of the time you have to train.
This is a technology that lets you get more
out of that limited time.
- I have always been focusing on training the body.
It wasn't until I got older and smarter
that I realized well it really starts
with training your brain.
(ticking sound)
- [Narrator] As professional athlete's careers span years,
sometimes decades, they need
to constantly reinvent themselves
to stay ahead of the competition.
Tiger Woods changed his swing over time.
Serena Williams perfected her power with precision.
Michael Phelps focused on his mental game.
Those adjustments can take a long time to perfect,
but what if new brain zapping technology
could significantly reduce that time
and help aging athletes change their game faster?
This technology is called
transcranial direct current stimulation, or TDCS.
Basically it's a small electrical current
that can be applied to the brain,
specifically the motor cortex,
the part of the brain that controls movement.
We get better at really any skill by repetition,
and that happens by changing the brain
and forming new pathways for that new skill.
The scientific term for this process
is called neuroplasticity,
and sending TDCS to the brain is said
to speed up that process.
Typically this was done in the lab with wires
and electrodes, but Halo Neuroscience is one
of the first companies to offer TDCS as a consumer product.
- Halo Neuroscience is a human performance company,
and we make brain stimulators,
wearable products, that help people get better
at sports, music, anything
where they live and die by movement.
- [Narrator] Brett says by wearing their headset
for just 20 minutes before you learn something new
you'll have a window up to 60 minutes
of increased neuroplasticity,
a time when your brain can learn repetition
better and faster.
For athletes like Tim O'Donnell that translates
into improving and refining their form
and thus changing their game more quickly
with the headset than without it.
(upbeat music)
Tim is one of the world's top triathletes.
He just got second in last year's Ironman World Championship
and set a record for the fastest race by an American man.
He partners with Halo Neuroscience
and wears their headset nearly every day of his training.
- [Tim] I can control all the variables.
I can focus on my power or my cadence,
and I can really just do the work.
- I think Tim has really helped advance our understanding
of how this is relevant to endurance sports.
Your whole success depends on being able
to keep your act together, keep your form in the face
of more and more fatigue,
and if you can do that you're gonna succeed.
- [Narrator] The concept is elegant, and there are plenty
of anecdotal examples suggesting it works.
But what does the science say?
Well, the jury's still out.
- [Alex] Transcranial direct current stimulation,
it's remarkably simple.
Not suggesting it, but you could do it at home
with a 9v battery, two wires, and two electrodes.
- [Narrator] This is Alex Hutchinson,
a science and technology journalist writing mostly
about endurance sports.
- [Alex] The origins of the technology go back
in some ways thousands of years.
People were putting electric torpedo fish
on their heads to cure headaches 2,000 years ago.
The modern version of the technology was developed
sometime in the late 1990s.
It's really hard to do good research in these areas.
Well how do you measure
if someone got half a percent better?
I'm only aware of two studies that use the Halo device.
They're both very small studies.
It's hard to draw air tight conclusions from them,
but the broader question is whether the technology works
consistently and repeatably for a majority of people.
- [Narrator] Sending an electrical current
to your brain sounds dangerous,
but several studies suggest it could help treat depression,
anxiety, Parkinson's Disease, and even chronic pain.
And while it's not approved by the FDA,
it's generally accepted as safe.
However there is minimal research on the long term effects
of TDCS, but the concept has been used in different forms
for years with no evidence of damage to the brain.
- The strength of the electrical field in this technology
it's not too different from the electrical fields
that your brain generates in the first place.
You're not standing under a power line.
It's kinda the language of the brain.
- [Narrator] Tim is confident this tech has helped him
continue to improve as he's aged.
- This year I had my strongest Ironman World Championship
ever, and I was the first American to ever break
the eight hour barrier in Hawaii.
(crowd cheers)
It's pretty insane to think about the fact that I'm 39.
I've been racing this race forever,
and I just had my best performance.
So here I am, later stages of my career,
and I'm still getting better.
And it's awesome. (laughs)
- [Narrator] But as more and more
tech enabled performance enhancers come to market,
it will inevitably force leagues, coaches, and players
to answer the question of how
to maintain a level playing field.
- [Alex] The role of technology in sport is a conversation
that we have to have because I think it's a really
kind of profound question for all of us to try
and understand what the nature of our limits are.
We can move towards the glory of the cyborg athlete,
or we can take the sort of traditionalist route.
- I got into this sport not to win races,
but to find the best version of me
and to challenge myself in so many different ways.
Not just physically, but emotionally, mentally, spiritually,
and I still feel I haven't completed that journey.
I think there's more challenges out there,
and I think there's better results out there.
I'm not gonna let my age stop me from doing that.
- Thanks for watching our series The Edge.
If you wanna find out more about how technology
is changing the game, go to our website
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like this one every week.