Human beings are the ultimate malcontents. Despite our giant brains, elaborate languages and sophisticated reasoning skills, we’re not satisfied. We want to be smarter yet. In our never-ending quest for a mental edge, we turn to things like caffeine, crossword puzzles and brain-training computer games.
Sometimes, however, our reach exceeds our grasp. To feed our insatiable hunger to improve, two mechanical engineers recently teamed up to create a new product, called foc.us, that juices the prefrontal cortex with about a milliamp of electricity. Marketed to gamers, the foc.us headset promises to “overclock” the brain, a term that digital technorati use to describe a computer that has been modified to operate faster than it was designed to.