The startup company Prophetic has unveiled its smart bracelet, Halo, designed to be worn on the head to help humans stimulate certain parts of the brain responsible for daydreaming, thinking, and decision-making. This allows the wearer to continue contemplating work during a short nap, although sleep experts have expressed doubts about the company's ability to deliver on its promises.
The bracelet features a simple circular design that is comfortable to wear during sleep and is equipped with a battery that lasts throughout the night. The design comes from Card37, the same company that worked on the N1 brain chip for Neuralink, owned by Elon Musk.
The Halo bracelet uses ultrasound waves at specific frequencies along with machine learning models trained on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) data, aiming to enable the human mind to control the state of lucid dreaming—where the dreamer is aware they are dreaming and can influence the course and events of the dream, according to the company's website.
The bracelet operates through the Prophetic app, which must be downloaded to the user's phone. The app is essential for running the machine learning models and for collecting and analyzing the data acquired from the wearer's brain.
In an interview with Fortune, Prophetic's founder and CEO, Eric Walberg, explained that the company's goal is to increase human productivity through complete control over their dreams, noting that the technologies offered by the forthcoming head-worn bracelet will provide a level of analysis and idea generation previously inaccessible to sleeping individuals.
