Muse: the brain sensing headband

http://www.choosemuse.com

by beltex • 12 years ago

86 54 12 years ago

voltagex_• 12 years ago

Muse uses 7 finely calibrated EEG sensors to detect and measure the activity of your brain. This sensory input is translated into real-time feedback on your tablet or smart phone via Bluetooth. The result is a rich, real-time audio and visual experience.

Calibrated for whom?

barkingcat2• 12 years ago

If you take a minute to read the information available

http://www.choosemuse.com/pages/faq#using

says that there is a 1 minute calibration period at the beginning of each use.

dsl• 12 years ago

I'm glad it wraps around the front of the head. It's an amazing visual clue to everyone else that this is the type of person you want to avoid a conversation with.

andreasklinger2• 12 years ago

personally i believe it looks surprisingly low-key

cstrat• 12 years ago

had to laugh at this comment.

is the plan that people wear this around day to day??

Kiro• 12 years ago

Funny comment but completely out of context since this is not something you're supposed to wear in public.

moron4hire2• 12 years ago

So the picture of the one woman laughing is not having a conversation with anyone, but actually having a psychotic episode?

pknight• 12 years ago

I've been waiting for a basic device that just tells me roughly what brain state I'm in (alpha/beta/delta/theta/gamma dominant) with bonus points if it has a feedback mechanism to make it easier to train one self into a certain state.

I don't think they got the pricing right. There are already quite a lot of consumer EEG devices on the market that either do more and/or are cheaper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_consumer_brain%E2...

Breefield2• 12 years ago

But none that are as pretty and well tuned.

andreasklinger2• 12 years ago

There should be meditation apps which support this.

Would love to train my focus more.

barkingcat2• 12 years ago

To give some more information, these tech info and sdk pages are linked from the faq site:

Tech specs:

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0348/7053/files/muse-tech-s...

SDK guide:

https://sites.google.com/a/interaxon.ca/muse-developer-site/...

Killah9112• 12 years ago

A $300 consumer product that promises to help one be more "mindful" & "present" more "efficiently" than plain old meditation. What is sad is the irony in all of this. What's sadder is that I want to buy it...

Might be brilliant on their part. Corporate consultant gurus are making quite a nickel telling execs to be more "mindful" & "present". Might be an opportune time to break into the market and displace some spiritual advisors with a little technology too. Maybe Verison 2.0 will help you down the 8fold path faster and without years of meditation & conditioning.

DaniFong• 12 years ago

Two things:

1) A recently discovered very strong correlation (needs further longitudinal study) between mindfulness practice and a reduced decline in mental performance with age.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnagi.2014.00...

2) I had a demo -- the device is actually very responsive and seems to really work. The science (not conclusive but interesting) behind it is a well known correlation with meditation and brain alpha waves. YMMV.

nabla92• 12 years ago

I have been doing zazen meditation as 2-3 hours per day for 10+ years.

The way I see it, mindfulness practices and meditation gives long term effects because you are doing the effort yourself. It's not the mental state you are in during the meditation that brings the long term benefits. What works is your constant effort to look at your mind and notice what it does, even when you are distracted or feel vexed and especially then.

When you do 7 day zazen retreat where you meditate 10-16 hours per day, you feel pain in your legs, periods of intense drowsiness, agitation, strong emotions, boredom, etc. all this while sitting and looking calm outwards. Within all this internal storm you are just looking at what happens your own mind at the current moment. Attaching yourself to pleasant mental states you get in meditation is just waste of time.

The way these EEG devices work is by giving you feedback loop that gets you into relaxed state. That's not same as meditation. It can have good effects, but it's not the same.

One person drives with car 10 km every day and other person runs 10 km every day. The amount they travel correlates very closely, but only one person gets exercise.

ejain• 12 years ago

You don't really need a gadget to meditate, any more than you need an app to go running. But it's nice to be able to keep track of your progress, and maybe even use the data to see how variables like sleep or exercise affect your ability to stay focused and relaxed.

I wrote a small app to record short meditation sessions using a NeuroSky MindWave [https://github.com/zenobase/zenobase-mindlog]. But I stopped using it because getting this device positioned correctly was a pain...

ehurrell• 12 years ago

Having done some small experiments with EEG I'm wary of these consumer devices (have seen 'performance improving' gaming gear too), mostly work with muscles etc. This doesn't claim EEG that I can see though so... who knows? (EDIT: just saw EEG details, if they can get a clean signal without using conductive gel fair play to them, I would love to hear how because that is an achievement!)

As an aside a friend once described capitalism as 'viral' in that everything can be looked at through its eyes, packaged and sold, and that's why it can be so hard to change, even radical movements to disrupt it are packaged and sold, think Che Guevara t-shirts. It's fascinating to see.

nabla92• 12 years ago

I agree. EEG signals are buried within layers of much stronger artifacts.

I'm relatively sure that this device just notices when you you relax your face and forehead muscles. That's good indicator of your relaxation.

gsteinb882• 12 years ago

Is this at all different from the Melon[0] headband (a Kickstarter backed project from ~a year ago, and half the price)?

[0] http://www.thinkmelon.com/

Breefield2• 12 years ago

You can get it today (or 3-4 weeks rather for order fulfillment).

gsteinb882• 12 years ago

Fair; I'm more curious about the technical aspects / whether the doubled cost translates into anything more than immediacy.

curiousDog• 12 years ago

Ahh, was hoping it was a device that delivered minimal tDCS. Does such a device exist?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct-current_sti...

icelancer3• 12 years ago

http://www.foc.us/

Foc.us does. I have one. Works well.

EDIT: Downvoted for providing a link? I don't work for Foc.us or anything.

meowface• 12 years ago

This sounds very interesting.

I understand this has been approved as "safe", and I doubt it would ever lead to death or harm, but I wonder what the long term effects of frequent brain stimulation could be. It could be good effects, but it could also be bad. I don't believe any longitudinal study has been done on something like this.

How do you feel while you're using it?

neverminder• 12 years ago

It's target market seem to be gamers, but I was just wondering are there any other positive effects that a software engineer would benefit from, besides memory?

tdaltonc• 12 years ago

Who has a hard time focusing on video games?

glassdoor• 12 years ago

Given that Jason has funded this startup, also invested in Calm (and I believe in his intelligence), I should not doubt this product. This product has been demonstrated first in the Launch Hackaton and it worked. Coming from the signal processing background I'm always very suspicious how sensors can preform such great filtering on the signal, but looking at the investor profile makes me think there is something there.

kalleboo• 12 years ago

I think I'll stick to http://www.necomimi.com

tiziano882• 12 years ago

uhmm interesting wiggle wiggle

tiziano882• 12 years ago

I'm having a hard time searching for this thing as "muse band" on Google :)

beltex• 12 years ago

http://interaxon.ca

The company behind Muse.

caycep• 12 years ago

The cynic in me feels that much of what they may be determining is from muscle artifact...i've been looking through some (plain old clinical/medical 32 electrode) EEG data and even that has a lot of artifact. Although I suppose it's some behavioral correlation - the more stressed out you are the more you clench your muscles, I suppose.

At the very least if they've figured out how to get clean EEG w/o having to use smelly EEG conductive goop, props to them!

waterlesscloud• 12 years ago

Reminds me of the Atari Mindlink.

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/mindlink...

It worked via your forehead muscles.

Weirdly, I did consumer research testing for this thing as a teenager. They showed us a video and then let us test it with River Raid (which was an Activision game, go figure). Then one of those group sessions where they interview you all with someone filming behind a two-way mirror. The Atari thing did kinda work. Sorta. Anyway, it was a fun consumer research thing to be paid for.

sciguy77• 12 years ago

Haven't there been a few of these on Indiegogo?

drodgers• 12 years ago

This was one of them: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/muse-the-brain-sensing-he...

sz4kerto• 12 years ago

If we're at headache: the website gives me one.

kidsil• 12 years ago

Very little (almost none?) information given.

Talk about the software connected to this..

Anyone spending 300$ for so little information?

pacoverdi• 12 years ago

Ooh, these sudden background color changes when scrolling really hurt my brain!

5partan• 12 years ago

This site demonstrates how the blink and marquee tag look in 2014

waps• 12 years ago

I wonder when the first real such product will exist. Like any system that synchronizes by waves it can be modified by waves, probably much more than you'd be able to do through chemicals.

So who will make the first heroine headband ? It will probably need outputs as well as inputs though.

moron4hire2• 12 years ago

It seems to just be a biofeedback device. It tells you when you are experiencing the right brain wave pattern so that you're consciously aware of it, but you have to do the work of meditating to alter the state.

nebulous1• 12 years ago

Just trying to read that site stressed me out. So they failed before they even got started.

DavidSJ• 12 years ago

Came here to say the same thing. Background colors and text changing without interaction and unpredictable consequences of navigation actions makes for quite the stressful experience.

n8m• 12 years ago

I wonder if someone with migraine somehow could benefit from such a device/training.

Serow225• 12 years ago

The tagline (the brain sensing headband) is hilarious, I'd love to see the app just respond Yes or No when a person puts the headband on ;)

mrbill• 12 years ago

As of May 14th, they were telling backers (of which I'm one) that delivery is delayed 4-6 weeks.

yoz-y• 12 years ago

Big issue with this kind of headband is the position of electrodes. Forehead seems like a good place in the first time since the frontal lobe is devoid of hair, however the EEG signal at this place is heavily artifacted by muscular activity (blinks, eye movements, facial muscles).

The most "interesting" brain activity also happens in the central axis of the brain (going from nose, through the top of the head and back to the occiput). It is however a design challenge to get electrodes to this place without the use of ugly caps and gel.

figital• 12 years ago

To the best of my basic knowledge (and as mentioned here already) EEG isn't going to be super-useful for a consumer device like this ... HEG (infrared detection of oxygen levels) is a better option in terms of the ratio of easy hookups to meaningful (mass market) results.

herval• 12 years ago

I'd like to dispense just a bit of unsolicited feedback: the website is SO flashy/animated that I scrolled all the way to the end and didn't pay attention to any of the actual content.

rambojohnson• 12 years ago

agreed. the constantly shifting background colors gave me a headache. navigating the site wearing Muse would break the product.

Muse: the brain sensing headband

Related Stories