Was dead set against consumer EEG headsets until a neuroscientist broke down why they're actually useful

I always thought those Muse and NeuroSky headsets were toys, basically glorified meditation timers. But a researcher at a local meetup in Austin told me that for basic neurofeedback training, the signal to noise ratio is good enough to teach people how to regulate their alpha waves. She showed me her lab's published paper comparing a Muse to a medical grade system and the correlation was something like 87% for frontal lobe readings. That changed my mind. I bought a used Muse off Craigslist for $60 and I've been using it to practice staying calm during coding sessions. Has anyone here actually tracked real improvements using these things?

2 comments

2 Comments

dakota_singh3911d ago

That 87% correlation sounds impressive until you remember an 87% correlation on a frontal lobe reading still means the thing is wrong 13% of the time. And that's in a controlled lab setting with a researcher probably adjusting the headset just right and making sure the person isn't moving. Real life use with a $60 Craigslist find that someone else sweated into for two years is a different story. I messed around with a NeuroSky at a friend's place once and it kept telling me I was in a deep meditative state while I was actively stressing about traffic. The tech is just not that serious yet. People want to believe a cheap headset is gonna fix their focus but they're mostly paying for the placebo effect and a pretty phone app.

jordancoleman11d ago

Read an article saying most of these are just fancy random number generators.