Matt Sornson wants to learn Ruby On Rails, a popular batch of software used to build Web pages. To do so more quickly, he straps a homemade device to his head and pumps up to 2 milliamps of electrical current—about 1/500th the juice needed to power a 100-watt light bulb—into his brain. “I’m onto day eight,” Sornson says. “I’m not entirely sure if it’s affecting my learning or not, but what’s cool is that it definitely feels like I have a six or seven-cup caffeine buzz without feeling jittery at all.”

Sornson calls his brain gizmo the GoFlow β1. He and three friends have spent about a month refining the product, which is a headband with a pair of electrodes dangling off the side. The group of college students, all in Michigan, hopes to create the first low-cost, commercial tDCS, or transcranial direct current stimulation, kit.

Photograph by Matt Sornson

Scientists have experimented with stimulating the brain and curing illnesses through electricity for many decades. While the results have been mixed, interest in this type of research has increased in recent years due to some fresh insights around how the brain works. Sornson points to the Defense Department and Air Force as a couple of groups doing fresh research around tDCS.

The grand quest Sornson and his cohorts have gone after is the creation of a low-cost Flow machine. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent years promoting the idea of a Flow state, which is what artists, athletes, and even workers enter during periods of intense concentration. The hope is that a tDCS machine could help people trigger a Flow state. “When you look at the brainwave patterns created by these machines, they are very similar to those a pro athlete would experience when they are in that state of Flow,” Sornson says.

Photograph by Matt Sornson

It should be noted that Sornson studies marketing, not neuroscience, and the rest of his crew specialize in software and website design. “This machine will be designed for people interested in experimental use,” Sornson says.

The GoFlow β1 has yet to go on sale, but there are some specs available. It will cost $99 and come with a 60-pack of disposable electrodes, a placement map, and a 5-milliamps safety fuse, which is nice. Sornson has started to contact professors at Michigan State and Western Michigan University about conducting tests with the contraption—and hopefully adding some scientific rigor to the device.