Neuropriming

Research indicates that athletes would benefit immensely from training the brain, but up until now, the discussion has only been theoretical. At Halo Neuroscience, we’ve developed a concrete solution to address the challenge of training the neuromuscular circuitry of athletes. Our product, Halo Sport, uses cutting-edge brain stimulation techniques to allow athletes to tap into their muscles’ full capacity.

When combined with an existing strength training regimen, the Halo Sport headset induces a temporary state of hyper-learning or hyperplasticity in the motor cortex. This enables the brain to send stronger and more synchronized signals to the muscles, leading to stronger and more explosive muscle contractions. In this way, athletes can train their brains to drive their muscles to their true potential, rendering workouts more productive and efficient.

Plasticity

Movement is complex: each time your body moves, there are tens of thousands of neurons sending electrical signals. Whether you’re training for a marathon, learning a new piano piece, or working on your vertical, your brain needs to refine how it tells your muscles to make the complex movements required. The brain’s unique ability to fine-tune itself—called plasticity—allows it to do just that.

Plasticity means your brain can strengthen existing connections between neurons and even form new functional pathways. Through this process, you progress from the raw, unrefined movements of a novice to the powerful, precise movements of an expert.

Optimizing your motor cortex helps your muscles perform better in a number of ways.

Skill

Motor skills rely on the brain to send signals to the correct muscles and parts of muscles in the right order. Through plasticity, your brain is able to ensure that your neurons are working together for a precise result, like playing an instrument, sinking a putt, or leaping a hurdle.

Endurance

Endurance relies on the motor cortex to repeat an action for an extended period of time. Each time you take a step, swim a stroke, or pedal a bike, your brain and your muscles consume energy. Via plasticity, your training leads to more efficient movements, reducing the energy cost of each action and allowing you to endure for a longer period of time.

Strength

Strength relies on the motor cortex to ensure that your muscle fibers are contracting together and not competing with each other. Powerful output requires the coordination of the many thousands of neurons that activate a group of primary and synergist muscles. With plasticity, the brain learns to contract more useful muscle fibers and relax opposing fibers, allowing you to lift more.

Hyperplasticity

Halo Sport is designed to make your training or practice more efficient by improving your brain’s natural plasticity. By applying a mild electric field to the motor cortex, Halo’s Neuropriming technology induces a state of “hyperplasticity.” When you train in a hyperplastic state, the brain’s normal fine-tuning process occurs more rapidly — meaning better results from each practice rep.

To understand how Halo Sport achieves these benefits, it’s important to understand how neurons communicate with each other. This graph demonstrates what a neuron does when it sends a signal. The grey line is a non-primed neuron — it starts at a baseline, and stays there, not sending any signals until it starts to receive information from other neurons (the first bump). Over time, signals come in from other neurons and the line rises. If the neuron receives enough input within a short period of time, it crosses an electrical threshold and sends a signal called an action potential. This is how neurons communicate with each other. 

The green line represents a neuron primed for hyperplasticity, with an elevated starting point. Similar to the unprimed neuron above, as signals come in, the line again rises until it reaches the electrical threshold and fires an action potential. The difference is that it now takes less input to trigger the neuron to send a signal. This means that more signals will be sent for a constant amount of input, and — even more importantly — nearby neurons will be more likely to fire together. Because plasticity is driven by neurons firing together as they send and receive signals, this leads to hyperplasticity — better, faster fine-tuning of your brain’s neuronal connections.