Restore or Optimise: which pathway is yours
Two pathways, one clinic. Restore is for people below their own baseline with a diagnosed condition. Optimise is for people at or above it who want measurable cognitive gains. Here is what each one involves.
In this article
The short answer
Ask yourself where you are against your own normal, not against anyone else’s. If you are below it and something has been diagnosed, that is Restore. If you are at or above it and want to measure a gain, that is Optimise.
Nobody expects you to self-select accurately. The free consultation exists to make that call with you.
Side by side
| Restore | Optimise | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is for | You are functioning below your own baseline, usually with a diagnosed condition | You are at or above baseline and want measurable cognitive gains |
| Typical starting point | Treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue | Attention, planning, response inhibition, cognitive longevity |
| Goal | Getting back towards your baseline | Moving measurably above it |
| Course length | Varies widely with the condition; longer courses are common | Shorter courses are common |
| First step | Free fifteen-minute consultation | Free fifteen-minute consultation |
| Before treatment | Motor threshold, target selection, NayaScore baseline | Motor threshold, target selection, NayaScore baseline |
| What is measured | NayaScore, repeated during the course | NayaScore, repeated during the course |
| Price | From £350 per rTMS session | From £350 per rTMS session |
Restore: getting back to your own baseline
Restore is the pathway most people arrive on. Something has been diagnosed, several things have been tried, and function is below where it used to be.
The published account we can point you to is Etienne Balland’s, by-lined in The Telegraph on 16 March 2026. He describes chronic fatigue syndrome with onset in March 2022, and a year spent largely bed-bound with his parents as his carers. He is explicit that he does not attribute it to Covid, and we will not do so on his behalf.
His first course was thirty sessions of fifteen to twenty minutes, sometimes two or three in a single day. He reported improvement within two weeks and a decisive change by week three.
He also relapsed in June 2025 and had a second course. His own summary afterwards was that he felt “90 per cent back to normal”. He is now training as a practitioner.
Two things in that account matter more than the good news. Relapse happened, and a second course was a normal response to it rather than a failure. And the course was long, because complex chronic fatigue tends to need a long course.
Optimise: measuring a gain rather than a recovery
Optimise starts from a different place. Nothing is broken, function is intact, and the question is whether specific cognitive domains can be moved and shown to have moved.
Greg Smith, chief executive of IP Group plc, agreed in May 2026 to let us publish his figures. His programme was five sessions with three minutes of stimulation in each, spread across seven weeks, with three NayaScore assessments along the way.
Across those three sittings, his response inhibition moved from the 86th to the 93rd percentile. His attention moved from the 62nd to the 89th. His planning moved from the 70th to the 90th.
Mental rotation was included as a stability check, because it should not move much over a few weeks. It held at 113 across all three sittings, which is the reassuring part of the dataset rather than the exciting one.
Now the caveats, and they belong in full. Three assessments over seven weeks is a short series, and practice effects and regression to the mean cannot be excluded from a series that short.
These are one person’s results. They are individual, and they are not representative of typical outcomes.
We publish them because he consented and because they are specific. We do not publish them as a projection of what your own numbers will do.
What is the same on both pathways
Both begin with the free fifteen-minute consultation, and both are screened at that point for the things that rule stimulation out. Both then measure your motor threshold, so your dose is a percentage of your own figure rather than a standard setting.
Both use the same target selection: candidate sites over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex are tested, and the site producing the clearest slowing of heart rate is treated.
Both are tracked with the NayaScore assessment, taken before treatment and repeated during the course. It combines grip strength, continuous heart rate variability from a wearable ring, and cognitive testing across twelve domains. It is a measurement tool rather than a diagnostic test, and results are interpreted alongside clinical judgement.
What the choice actually turns on
Three things, in this order. First, what has been diagnosed, if anything, because a diagnosis changes both the pathway and the likely length of the course.
Second, where your function sits against your own normal. That is a question only you can answer at the start, and the assessment then puts numbers to it.
Third, what you want to be able to check at the end. Restore asks whether symptoms have moved. Optimise asks whether specific cognitive domains have moved, and whether the stability check held while they did.
What neither pathway promises
Neither promises a response. Roughly speaking, a meaningful minority of people do not improve on any course of stimulation, and reassessment partway through exists so that arrives as early information rather than a late disappointment.
Neither pathway guarantees a number, on a questionnaire or on a percentile chart. Results are individual and not guaranteed.
Neither is a substitute for care you already have in place. Tell your clinician who else is treating you, because a course here is intended to sit alongside existing care rather than replace it.
And on Optimise in particular, the evidence base for cognitive enhancement in healthy people is younger and smaller than the evidence for depression. Our article on what the evidence supports draws that line explicitly.
Bottom line
The pathways differ in goal, length and expectation, not in technology. Restore is aimed at your baseline. Optimise is aimed above it.
Both are measured before, during and after, which is the only reason either claim can be checked. Bring the question to the free consultation and let a clinician answer it with you.
If you sit somewhere between the two, say so. That is a common place to be, and it is not something you need to resolve before you walk in.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Restore and Optimise?
Restore is for people functioning below their own baseline, usually with a diagnosed condition such as treatment-resistant depression or chronic fatigue. Optimise is for people already at or above baseline who want measurable cognitive gains. The treatment technology is the same. The goal, the length of the course and the measures differ.
Which pathway am I likely to need?
That is decided at your free consultation rather than by you in advance. A clinician will ask what you are dealing with, what has been tried, and where you would place your current function against your own normal. If neither pathway is appropriate, they will tell you that instead.
How long does each pathway take?
It varies with the condition and the protocol, so we will not give you a universal figure. The consented Optimise case study on this page involved five sessions across seven weeks. A published Restore account describes thirty sessions in a first course, sometimes two or three in a single day.
What gets measured on either pathway?
Both use the NayaScore assessment. It combines grip strength, continuous heart rate variability from a wearable ring, and cognitive testing across twelve domains reported as percentiles. It is taken before treatment and repeated during a course. It is a measurement tool, not a diagnostic test, and results are read alongside clinical judgement.
