Dopamine Labs is a startup company based in Los Angles who started creating tools to increase app usage among users. Now the company is claiming that they can do the reverse and eliminate app addiction.
The startup is formed by two neuroscientists who received their doctorates from the University of South California. The duo has since developed a reinforcement api based on their complimentary research done at the university. With the newly developed api, the company believes that app developers can increase user engagement and positive reinforcement on any app, according to usedopamine.com.
Co-founders, T. Dalton Combs and Ramsay Brown's research findings gave rise to their own tech company. Combs who is a doctor in the field of neuroeconomics and the company's executive was responsible for understanding the connection between chemistry and biology in their involvement in decision making.
Brown, on the other hand is the chief operating officer has a doctorate in neuroinformatics. He is responsible in developing tools to help neuroscientists better understand the brain.
According to Techcrunch, the two have now developed a technology that they claim can fight the addictive behavior its tools may create. The tool is called Space which works as the inverse of their first project.
Space's main function is to reduce the drive to continue app usage. It reduces the delivery of stimulus from apps which will prevent any further usage.
The duo's experiments were based on initial findings of the earliest modern advances in the field of neuroscience; specifically, the works of James Olds and Peter Milner. Olds and Milner were the first neuroscientists to discover a "pleasure center" in the brain. The pair of nueroscientists determined the cause of pleasure was the release of a chemical known as dopamine.
Further research has suggested that by delaying the gratification stimulated by desire, scientists have concluded that it can break the association between the source of desire and the object of that desire. This in essence is what Space does to users meaning the tool reduces the delivery of stimulus from the app and the need to continue to use it.
