Alexandra Carmichael

August 7, 2011

Nancy Dougherty made her own set of “mindfulness pills” – placebos labeled Focus, Willpower/Energy, Calm, and Happy. The pills were embedded with sensors that transmitted signals to her phone, recording each time she took the different pills, as well as her heart rate, activity rate, and sleep. Nancy works at Proteus Biomedical, in case you’re wondering how she made this self-experiment happen. She learned that taking an “Energy” pill actually made her bike harder to work and have a higher heart rate, and taking a “Focus” pill actually made her do more work. Watch her fun talk on managing mood and playing with the placebo effect below. (Filmed at the Bay Area QS Show&Tell Meetup #19, at Singularity University.)

Nancy Dougherty – Mindfulness Pills from Gary Wolf on Vimeo.