A recent article in Military.com reported that the US Navy is testing brain-stimulating technologies with the SEALs. The device looks like a set of chunky headphones, and they work by applying an electrical stimulus through the skull. The company behind the device, Halo Neuroscience, says this stimulation primes the brain for improved responsiveness to training and greater performance. It could even save lives on the battlefield, when sustained attention is required. But will this “hyperplasticity” prime the brain not just for performance, but also for PTSD?

While I haven’t seen the device being used by the SEALs, Halo Neuroscience has a sport version that is marketed to elite athletes that looks like a chunky set of headphones. Users include NFL and Olympic athletes. One of my sports heroes, Camille Leblanc-Bazinet has been using one. Camille was the winner of the 2014 Crossfit Games. The last couple of years has been lacklustre for her, but things seem to looking up lately. She came in third in the Crossfit Open out of a worldwide pool of about one hundred thousand participants. As well, she has set two personal records in Olympic lifting in the past year, which is unusual among veteran competitors.

The Halo Sport works by sending electrical signals to the motor cortex, it’s roughly the part of your brain going over the top of your head from ear to ear. It’s pretty much where the band of the head set sits. They recommend that you wear the device for about 20 minutes to achieve hyperplasticity, a state where your brain is particularly receptive to learning. During this time, you can groove in a new movement, work on strength, or endurance. The company says the technology is safe and is backed up by research studies and thousands of users.

So far, we’ve been talking about the sport version. Little is known about the military version, other than the early results are “promising.” Halo Neuroscience’s Chief Technology Officer, Brett Wingeir, said,

“They’re training at this amazingly high level, and the amount they can train is actually limited by things like physical recovery. They want to be able to maintain those incredible physical standards as efficiently as possible. That helps them avoid injury. If I was to sum it up, it’s kind of all about just training a little bit smarter.”

If the device is only meant to be used in training, there probably isn’t much to worry about. The Halo device is being used in a controlled manner. But more importantly, it stimulates the motor cortex, which is in the top of the brain. The parts of the brain that are implicated in PTSD are the hippocampus (in the bottom of the brain), the amygdala (just above the hippocampus), and parts of the prefrontal cortex. Perhaps not coincidentally, these parts are involved in regulating the fight/flight/freeze reflex and the formation of memory. In relative terms, these brain parts aren’t that close to the motor cortex.

But things change one you get on the battlefield, and the tradeoffs between threat and risk changes. Would soldiers be wearing these for 20 minutes? Or for the many hours of duty or patrol on a counter-insurgency?Andrew Herr, CEO of research firm Helicase and an adjunct fellow with the Center for a New American Security, said,

“[In clinical settings] The concept’s that if you’re not healing, then no side effects are worth it or acceptable …when you’re sending people into combat situations where their lives are on the line, the ethics are flipped … I think actually we are thinking about ethics all backward in this field because the military has a unique requirement. And it’s even more powerful in the special operations field.”

I would argue that part of the threat situation is stress and there are certain risks that need special attention. When under stress, the body reacts differently. Most of us have experienced getting sick at stressful times in our lives. US Presidents age visibly while occupying the Oval Office.  Stimuli, medication, or chemicals that are safe in a normal situation can have harmful to soldiers on deployment. If we’re making the brain hyperplastic, it means that soldiers will be learning more effectively and in a combat zone, that includes lots of trauma.

What do you think? Would you wear a brain stimulator? In training? On deployment?