Health

Nottingham Wrist Device Offers New Hope for Teenagers Living with Tourette Syndrome

Abdul Mannan 5 minutes ago • 20 min read

The Trent Building clock tower at the University of Nottingham, where researchers developed the Neupulse wrist device for Tourette syndrome. — The Trent Building at the University of Nottingham, where the research behind the Neupulse wrist device was carried out. File photo taken 9 July 2021. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Greentreepencil (CC BY-SA 4.0).

A wrist-worn device developed by researchers at the University of Nottingham is giving teenagers living with Tourette syndrome something many of them have never had before: a quiet, drug-free way to calm their tics in the middle of an ordinary day. Teenagers who have tried it describe the change as life-changing, according to the BBC, which followed their stories in reports published on Thursday 12 November 2026. The device, called Neupulse, looks like a smartwatch and delivers gentle, rhythmic electrical pulses to a nerve in the wrist. It is the product of around two decades of neuroscience research, a clinical trial involving 135 volunteers across the United Kingdom, and a university spin-out company that has now brought a first version of the device to market.

The story matters because Tourette syndrome is far more common, and far more disruptive, than most people realise. According to Tourettes Action, the condition affects around one in every hundred children, and more than 300,000 children and adults in the UK are living with it. It usually begins in childhood, most often between the ages of eight and twelve, and it brings sudden, involuntary movements and sounds known as tics. There is no cure. The treatments that exist — behavioural therapy, medication and, in the most severe cases, brain surgery — help some people and fail others, and they are often hard to reach. A device that can be worn at home, switched on at the touch of a button and used without drugs would fill a gap that families have felt for years.

That is what the Nottingham team set out to build. Professor Stephen Jackson, who has led the research at the University of Nottingham, told the university that the work began around twenty years ago, after the team spoke to large numbers of people living with Tourette syndrome and tic disorders. What those people wanted, he said, was a treatment that did not involve drugs, that was safe and effective, and that they could use at home. The device that emerged from that conversation is now being worn by teenagers who say it has let them go back to school, sit with their friends, eat a meal in public and even perform on stage.

What the device does

Neupulse is a wrist-worn device that delivers rhythmic electrical stimulation to the median nerve, the nerve that runs through the wrist and into the hand. The stimulation is delivered in gentle trains of pulses at a frequency of 10 hertz, a rhythm chosen because it entrains — or synchronises with — the rhythmic electrical activity in the brain that is associated with suppressing movement. According to the University of Nottingham, the researchers found that this rhythmic median nerve stimulation substantially reduces both the frequency and the intensity of tics, and removes the urge to tic that many people with Tourette syndrome describe as the most distressing part of the condition.

The device is worn like a watch and controlled through an app, which lets the user set it up and manage it themselves. In the clinical trial, participants used it once a day, five days a week, for four weeks, in sessions lasting about fifteen minutes. The stimulation is low-intensity, between 1 and 19 milliamperes, and it is non-invasive: nothing is implanted, nothing breaks the skin, and there are no drugs involved. Users have described the sensation as calm and peaceful, with one teenager comparing it to a heartbeat.

Two versions of the device exist. Neupulse C is a wellness device that has been launched for home use, designed to support calm and relaxation during moments of restlessness or physical tension. Neupulse M is the medical version, built on the same research and technology, which is intended to be marketed specifically for the treatment of tics and Tourette syndrome. That version is still working its way through the regulatory approval process, and it has not yet been cleared as a medical treatment. The distinction matters, and it is one the researchers and the company have been careful to draw: the wellness device is available now, while the medical device must wait for regulators.

The teenagers who tried it

The most striking part of the story is not the technology but the teenagers who have used it. Katie Margree, 15, has lived with tics since she was eight years old. According to the University of Nottingham, her tics affect her movement and have made school particularly difficult, and tics linked to swallowing have caused her anxiety at mealtimes. She travelled from Hertfordshire to Nottingham with her mother, Julia, to try the device. In the BBC’s report, published on 12 November, she said trying it was the best day of her life.

“Using the device has allowed me to attend and remain in class more frequently,” Katie said, according to the University of Nottingham. “I can also attend assemblies and sit with my friends, which is a big thing for me when previously going to school has been such a challenge. The device has removed so much anxiety and worry about my tics, so I can now enjoy everyday activities like going to school, using public transportation and going to the movies.” Katie also performs in dance and musical theatre productions, and in a performance in August she incorporated the device into her costume.

Oliver Elliott, 15, came to the device after seeing the research featured in the film “I Swear”, which tells the story of Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson. Oliver has experienced tics for almost two years that affect the movements of his neck, making it difficult for him to eat, drink, sleep, read and write. According to the University of Nottingham, he said the device helped him enormously by reducing his tics so that he could return to his normal activities and hobbies. “The feeling of wearing the device is quite calm and peaceful. It’s a little like a heartbeat,” he said. “I’ve been able to eat and drink with ease, and in public I’ve been comfortable eating and drinking. I’ve also been able to start to rejoin education due to the device.”

His mother, Sarah, described the effect in even stronger terms. “When Ollie received his Neupulse device, the impact was immediate,” she said, according to the university. “Ollie has functional tics, and for him Neupulse works almost like an on/off switch. When he wears it, his movements reduce dramatically. When it is removed, the tics return instantly and with the same severity as before.” She added that the difference had been life-changing for the family, recalling a birthday meal out at which, for the first time in a long time, Oliver was able to eat, drink and enjoy the experience with them. “Perhaps most importantly, it has allowed us to reconnect in simple but meaningful ways,” she said. “Being able to give and receive a hug without violent movements getting in the way is something we no longer take for granted.”

Another teenager, Mylo, was 13 when he took part in the clinical trial in 2023 and is now 17. His account, reported by the BBC, adds to a picture that has been building for several years: young people who have lived with tics since childhood finding that a device on their wrist can give them a measure of control they did not have before. The singer Lewis Capaldi, who has spoken openly about living with Tourette syndrome, also tried the device. Professor Jackson said Capaldi’s results were remarkable.

The science: twenty years from lab bench to wrist

The idea behind Neupulse began with a simple observation about how the brain controls movement. The Nottingham researchers, working in the university’s School of Psychology, were studying the brain’s rhythmic electrical activity — the oscillations that rise and fall as the brain prepares and then suppresses a movement. They found that delivering rhythmic trains of electrical stimulation to the median nerve at the wrist could entrain those brain oscillations, strengthening the brain’s own movement-suppression signals. In practical terms, the stimulation appeared to boost the brain’s ability to hold a tic back.

That insight was first published in the scientific literature in 2020, in a paper in the journal Current Biology by Barbara Morera Maiquez and colleagues, which showed that entraining movement-related brain oscillations could suppress tics in Tourette syndrome. The team then set out to test whether the effect could be turned into something people could use at home, every day, without a laboratory. The result was a watch-like prototype, and then a formal clinical trial.

The trial, published in 2023 in the Journal of Neuropsychology, was a UK-wide, double-blind, sham-controlled study — the strongest design available for testing whether a treatment genuinely works. Between March and September 2022, 135 participants aged twelve and over with confirmed or suspected Tourette syndrome or chronic tic disorder, all with moderate to severe tics, were allocated at random to one of three groups of 45: active stimulation, sham stimulation, or a waitlist control group receiving treatment as usual. Neither the participants nor the researchers assessing them knew who was receiving the real stimulation. Each participant used the device at home once a day, five days a week, for four weeks.

The research was funded by the charity Tourettes Action, the National Institute for Health Research Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre and Neurotherapeutics Ltd, the University of Nottingham spin-out company behind the device. It was carried out by the university in collaboration with Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and the spin-out, and the work was led by Professor Stephen Jackson and Dr Barbara Morera, the founder and chief research officer at Neupulse.

What the trial actually showed

The results, measured on the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale, were clear. After four weeks, the group receiving active stimulation saw their tic severity score fall by 7.1 points, a reduction of about 35 per cent. The sham group improved by 2.13 points and the waitlist group by 2.11 points — small changes that did not differ from each other. The difference between the active group and the two control groups was statistically significant, with a p-value of 0.02, and the researchers described it as clinically meaningful, with an effect size of 0.5.

Tic frequency fell too. Blind analysis of video recordings showed that tics per minute dropped by 15.6 during active stimulation, compared with 7.7 during sham stimulation — a reduction of more than 25 per cent that was also statistically significant. In total, 59 per cent of the people who received active stimulation experienced a reduction in tic severity of at least 25 per cent compared with their starting point. Those are group averages from a single trial, not a promise for any individual, and tics naturally wax and wane, which is precisely why the sham comparison matters. But the design of the trial — randomised, double-blind and sham-controlled — is what allows the researchers to say the effect is real rather than a placebo response or a good month.

The findings were first reported in 2023, and they have since been followed by further development work. The team secured 1 million pounds in additional funding to commercialise the device, according to Pharmacy Update Online, and later raised a 2.5 million pound seed round to finish the prototype and open regulatory applications in the UK, Europe and the United States. Pre-orders for the wellness version opened in the UK in October 2025, with delivery expected around June 2026, and the device was formally launched in October 2026.

Where the device stands now

For families hoping to get hold of Neupulse, the position is promising but not yet straightforward. The wellness device, Neupulse C, is available as a consumer product. The medical device, Neupulse M, which would be marketed specifically for tics and Tourette syndrome, is still going through the regulatory approval process. That matters because it determines whether the device can be prescribed, whether it can be recommended for use in the NHS, and whether its cost can be met by the health service rather than by families themselves.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, known as NICE, has looked at the technology. In November 2024, draft guidance floated recommending two technologies for tic disorders, including the Nottingham wrist device. In the final guidance, however, only the other technology — ORBIT, an online behavioural programme — was kept, and the wrist device was left out because it had not yet met the necessary regulatory standards. NICE has provisionally evaluated the device but has been unable to recommend it for use in the NHS until regulatory approval is obtained. According to the BBC, NICE has said its committee will meet again to appraise the clinical and cost effectiveness of the technology and publish new guidance. If regulatory approval is obtained, it is hoped the device will be considered for NHS use.

That regulatory gap is the central tension in the story. On one side sits a peer-reviewed trial with a clear, statistically significant result, and teenagers describing the device as life-changing. On the other sits a system that quite properly demands more evidence, more regulatory paperwork and more proof of cost-effectiveness before it will pay for a new treatment. The gap is not unusual — it is the normal path for a new medical technology — but for families living with tics now, it is the difference between a device they can buy and a treatment the health service will provide.

The research team is already looking beyond Tourette syndrome. According to the University of Nottingham, early trials using the same wrist stimulation with people with Parkinson’s disease have shown success, and the team is planning a UK-wide clinical trial looking at anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The idea is that the same principle — entraining the brain’s movement-suppression rhythms through the median nerve — may help in other conditions where the brain’s control of movement or intrusive urges goes wrong.

Living with Tourette syndrome: the gap this device is trying to fill

To understand why a wrist device has attracted so much attention, it helps to understand what living with Tourette syndrome is actually like. The condition is a neurodevelopmental disorder, usually diagnosed between the ages of eight and twelve, in which a person experiences multiple motor tics and at least one vocal tic for more than a year. Tics are sudden, repetitive, involuntary movements or sounds. They can be as small as a blink or a throat-clear, or as disruptive as a violent jerk of the neck or a shouted word. They are often preceded by a premonitory urge — a rising, uncomfortable sensation that only the tic relieves — and many people can suppress them briefly, at the cost of intense concentration, before the urge becomes too strong.

Tics are three times as likely to occur in boys as in girls, according to the MSD Manual, and they typically increase in severity until around the ages of ten to twelve before easing during adolescence. In most children they eventually disappear, but in about one per cent they continue into adulthood. Up to 85 per cent of people with Tourette syndrome also live with at least one co-occurring condition, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder or an anxiety disorder. The condition often runs in families, and research points to differences in the brain’s motor circuits and imbalances in neurotransmitters, especially dopamine, although no single gene or test explains it.

The treatments available today reflect how difficult the condition is to manage. The main psychological therapy is Comprehensive Behavioural Intervention for Tics, known as CBIT, which combines habit reversal training with education and relaxation techniques. It helps many people, but it requires a trained therapist, and fewer than one in five people with the condition have access to behavioural therapies. Medication is approached with caution in children, because the side effects can be more disruptive than the tics themselves; when drugs are used, they include alpha-2 adrenergic agonists such as clonidine and guanfacine, and, for severe cases, antipsychotic medications such as aripiprazole and risperidone. For the most severe, treatment-resistant cases, deep brain stimulation — surgery to implant electrodes in the brain — is an option, but it is invasive and reserved for a small minority.

In 2025, NICE recommended ORBIT, an online remote behavioural intervention for tics, for use in the NHS for children and young people aged nine to seventeen. It was the first digital therapy of its kind to be endorsed, and it followed a survey of 1,508 patients and caregivers that highlighted long diagnostic waits and limited treatment options. But ORBIT is a therapy programme delivered through a screen, and it requires engagement, time and support. A device that can be worn and switched on in the moment — in a classroom, on a bus, at a family meal — offers something different: control at the point when it is needed most.

That is the gap Neupulse is trying to fill. It does not claim to be a cure, and nobody involved with it claims that it will remove tics altogether. What it offers is a reduction — around a third fewer tics in severity, a quarter fewer in frequency, in the trial — and, for the teenagers who have used it, a measure of control over a condition that has controlled them. For a fifteen-year-old who could not sit through a school assembly, that is not a small thing.

Analysis: Why It Matters

A treatment designed by listening, not by guessing

The most interesting thing about Neupulse is not the electronics but the way it was designed. Professor Jackson has said plainly that the research began by talking to people with Tourette syndrome and asking them what they wanted. The answer — a treatment without drugs, safe, effective and usable at home — shaped everything that followed. That sounds obvious, but it is not how medical technology usually develops. Devices are often built around what is technically possible, and patients are asked to adapt. Here the order was reversed: the lived experience came first, and the engineering followed. The result is a device that teenagers will actually wear, in school, on stage and on public transport, which is the only test that matters for a wearable treatment. A device that stays in a drawer helps nobody, however elegant its science.

A small trial, honestly reported

The clinical evidence for Neupulse is genuinely encouraging, but it is also honestly limited, and the researchers have not hidden that. The trial involved 135 people, which is large for a study of a tic disorder but small by the standards of drug trials. It lasted four weeks. It measured tics on a standardised scale and on video, and it used a sham control, which is the right way to test a device whose effect could easily be mistaken for placebo. The 35 per cent reduction in tic severity and the 25 per cent reduction in frequency are real, statistically significant results — but they are averages, and the trial does not tell us how long the benefit lasts, whether it holds up over months and years, or which patients benefit most. The honest way to read this story is as a strong early signal, not a settled answer. The planned larger trials, and the regulatory process itself, exist to turn that signal into certainty.

The wellness-versus-medicine trap

The split between Neupulse C, the wellness device, and Neupulse M, the medical device, is the most delicate part of this story, and it deserves careful attention. Selling a wellness device lets a company reach people quickly, without waiting years for regulatory approval. But it also creates a grey area: a product built on medical research, sold without medical claims, to people who are buying it precisely because of the medical research. Families need to understand exactly what they are buying, what it has and has not been proven to do, and what it costs. The company has been open about the distinction, and the BBC’s reporting has drawn it clearly. The risk is not that the device is dangerous — the stimulation is gentle and non-invasive — but that hope outruns evidence, and that families who can afford the device get help while families who cannot must wait for the NHS. That is a question of fairness, not of science, and it will only be resolved when the regulatory process catches up.

Why the NHS decision matters so much

NICE’s decision to leave the wrist device out of its final guidance in 2024, while recommending the ORBIT programme, is often presented as a setback. It is better understood as the system working as it should. NICE’s job is not to reward promising science but to decide what the health service should pay for, on the basis of evidence of clinical benefit and value for money. A device without regulatory approval cannot be recommended, however good its trial results. The encouraging part is that NICE has kept the door open: it has provisionally evaluated the technology and said its committee will meet again. If Neupulse M wins regulatory approval, the case for NHS use becomes strong — a non-invasive, home-based treatment for a condition in which fewer than one in five people can currently access behavioural therapy. The timeline matters: every year of delay is a year in which teenagers like Katie and Oliver manage without it, unless their families can pay.

A British science story with a long tail

There is a wider point here about how medical innovation actually happens. Neupulse did not appear overnight. It grew out of twenty years of basic neuroscience at a British university, funded by a patient charity, a public research funder and a university spin-out, tested in a trial run across the UK, and reported in the peer-reviewed literature before it ever reached a shop. That slow, unglamorous path is how most real medical advances are made, and it is worth noticing precisely because it is so different from the overnight breakthroughs that dominate headlines. The device’s next chapters — trials in Parkinson’s disease, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder — will test whether the same principle can travel beyond tics. If it can, a wristband built for Tourette syndrome may turn out to be the start of something much larger: a new, non-invasive way of tuning the brain’s own rhythms. That is a big claim, and it is unproven. But the first chapter, at least, is already written in the lives of the teenagers who wear it.

What to Watch Next

Regulatory approval for Neupulse M: whether, and when, the medical version of the device is cleared by regulators in the UK, Europe and the United States — the decision that unlocks NHS consideration.
NICE’s next appraisal: whether the committee reconvenes to assess the clinical and cost effectiveness of the technology, and whether it recommends the device for use in the NHS.
Larger and longer trials: whether follow-up studies confirm the 35 per cent reduction in tic severity over months rather than weeks, and identify which patients benefit most.
The Parkinson’s trials: early results from using the same wrist stimulation with people with Parkinson’s disease, and whether the technique can reduce tremor as well as tics.
The planned anxiety and OCD trial: the UK-wide study the Nottingham team hopes to launch, testing whether median nerve stimulation can help with conditions beyond tic disorders.
Access and price: how much the wellness device costs, whether the medical version is priced for the NHS, and whether families who cannot afford to buy the device can access it another way.
Long-term safety and use: whether daily use over months and years remains safe and effective, and how the device fits alongside existing treatments such as CBIT and medication.

Sources