Some children spend years in tutoring and still read below grade level. NeuroLingo is a headband that sends a very low current to the brain’s reading areas during practice, so tutoring has more to build on. In multiple trials, children with dyslexia read unfamiliar words faster and more accurately.
Founded at Yale
Backed by SOSV / HAX
Competed in TechCrunchSome children work twice as hard as their classmates to read, and progress comes slowly. NeuroLingo is for those children, ages 6 to 17, who are already doing the work: a tutor, a reading program at school, a structured program at home. It is not a replacement for any of that. It is worn during the practice they already do.
The range NeuroLingo is designed and studied for.
Orton-Gillingham, Wilson, Barton, Lindamood-Bell, your school’s program, or reading with you at the kitchen table.
During the reading practice already on the calendar.
How it works
The headband comes with packs of saline pads (similar to moist makeup remover pads). You’ll push those into the headband and slide it on like a pair of glasses.
The headband delivers a gentle, low-level current to the parts of the brain involved in reading. Most people describe a light tingle for the first few minutes while the nerves in the skin get used to the sensation.
It’s important your child does their normal literacy practice. The headband does not teach reading. The practice does. If your child is studying literacy for hours a day, pair the headband with the most difficult part of their practice.
Effects shown in the scientific literature consistently build over time with regular use. The studies below show regular usage of three times a week to have positive outcomes.
Non-invasive brain stimulation of this kind (tDCS) has been studied for more than twenty years, in adults and in children. Over the past decade, research groups in Europe and the United States have tested it in dyslexic children during reading practice. Multiple studies reported larger gains in reading than practice alone.
Studies on how the brain learns to read, and on what happens when stimulation is paired with reading practice.
A review of the imaging research. Children with dyslexia show differences in the structure and connectivity of the brain’s reading circuits, visible before reading instruction begins, and those circuits change with effective instruction.
Eighteen sessions of tDCS paired with cognitive training reduced low-frequency word errors and non-word reading times in children and adolescents with dyslexia. Gains held at one-month follow-up.
Eighteen sessions of tES paired with phoneme-grapheme training produced low-frequency word and pseudoword reading gains that persisted at six-month follow-up.
A 2025 scoping review of the entire tES-for-developmental-dyslexia clinical literature (225 participants total). Strongest, most consistent signal on non-word decoding.
One session of anodal tDCS over left superior temporal gyrus in dyslexic children improved auditory temporal processing, speech-in-noise perception, verbal memory, and reading, with reading improvements statistically tied to the underlying auditory gains.
A crossover trial in 24 children and adolescents with dyslexia: five consecutive daily tDCS sessions produced non-word reading speed gains sustained at one-month follow-up, evidence a short, deployable protocol is enough.
A randomized, sham-controlled trial in 20 university students with dyslexia: ten daily sessions of rhythm-based reading training with concurrent tDCS. Both groups read text faster right after training. Four weeks later, only the active stimulation group was still significantly above its starting speed.
In 12 children and adolescents with dyslexia, five consecutive tDCS sessions increased correct responses for pseudowords and text. The one-group pre/post study reported average gains of 43.6% and 32.2%.
Nineteen adults with dyslexia received five sessions of active or sham tDCS over the left visual motion area across two weeks. One week after treatment the active group read text at 114 words per minute against 91 for sham, with no loss of accuracy. Rapid number naming also sped up with active stimulation only.
General Neuro was founded at Yale by Alec Sheffield, a computational neuroscientist (PhD, Yale) who trained in brain stimulation at Harvard’s Berenson-Allen Center, along with Luke Knoble and Zida Sung, computer and electrical engineers from Virginia Tech, who build the headband and stimulation circuitry. We are a public benefit corporation, based in Boston and backed by SOSV / HAX. We have been building brain-stimulation headbands since 2024. More than a hundred of our first-generation headbands are in use in 22 countries, and our next generation headband is now at two pilot sites.
Former Chief Fellow at Yale Psychiatry. Clinical advisor for NeuroLingo.
Certified Orton-Gillingham Specialist since 2003, Reading Specialist, Special Education Teacher, and founder of Golden Advantage Education.
Children with dyslexia use NeuroLingo during Orton-Gillingham tutoring at Golden Advantage Education, led by founder Jennifer Golden, a Certified Orton-Gillingham Specialist since 2003.
Golden Advantage Education ↗
English-language learners at Virginia Tech use NeuroLingo during their language classes in a randomized controlled trial.
Language and Culture Institute ↗
Stimulation at this level has been used in research for more than twenty years and in thousands of sessions with children. The most common effects are a tingling or itching under the pads for the first minute or two, and occasionally mild skin redness that fades. The headband is set to the lower current range used in child research, and sessions stop automatically.
A light tingle under the pads for the first few minutes, then most children stop noticing it. It is nothing like the shock from a doorknob.
Reading runs on a network on the left side of the brain. In children with dyslexia, those left-side regions are less active, and the right side steps in to compensate. NeuroLingo uses transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS, in which a small, steady current passes through two pads on the scalp. This makes the left reading regions a little more responsive and the right a little less. It also makes the brain better able to rewire while it is on, known as neuroplasticity. Paired with reading practice, that gives the practice more to build on. That is why the headband is worn only during practice.
Yes, in the sense that the headband is worn during reading practice and does not teach reading on its own. A tutor, a school program, at-home practice, or a structured program like Orton-Gillingham or Lindamood-Bell all count.
We designed it for ages 6 to 17, but the research has been run on adults too: in one trial, adults with dyslexia read faster after five sessions (Heth & Lavidor 2015).
Three 20-minute sessions a week, during the decoding, reading, and phonological awareness practice your child already does.
No. NeuroLingo is sold as a reading-practice aid and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or condition.
In 2027. We will announce the quarter when the production run is booked. If the date moves, you will hear from us first with the option to cancel and a full refund.
It is applied to your order when you complete it. If you decide not to order, or just change your mind, email us and it is refunded in full, at any time.
Every order is refundable until the day it ships. After delivery you have 30 days to try it out.
The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia in 2027. Send us an email at info@generalneuro.com if you’re interested but outside these locations. Local taxes and duties are shown at checkout.
Yes, and we would like them to be! Tutors and teachers who serve low-income students can also apply for free headbands.
A lot of the children who would get the most out of a headband are in tutoring programs and classrooms running on fumes. So we made it easy to sponsor one for a kid in need. Foundations, districts, employers, families with a soft spot for readers: all welcome. We’re a public benefit corporation, which means the mission is in our legal paperwork, not just our marketing.
One, ten, or a whole classroom.
Tutors and teachers working with children in need apply, tell us about their students, and we send the headbands their way.
Three times a week, in the tutoring they already get. Same headband as everyone else.