Wasted $400 on a consumer EEG headset for meditation training

I bought one of those fancy Muse headsets about 8 months ago, thinking it would help me train my focus for work. The idea was that the feedback would show me when my brain was calm versus active, and I could practice getting into that relaxed state faster each day. But after about 20 sessions, I realized the data was all over the place and not really useful. The app gave me generic scores that didn't match how I actually felt, and I found myself just trying to game the signals to get a higher number. I tried it again last week after a long break, and sure enough, I got a 'great calm' score while my mind was racing about bills and my boss. For what it cost, I could have just sat quietly for 10 minutes a day and gotten the same benefit. Has anyone else found these consumer BCI gadgets to be more of a gimmick than a tool?

2 comments

2 Comments

mark67626d ago

...and that's exactly what happened with me too, the whole gaming the system thing. I mean, if your brain is just figuring out what pattern gets the high score instead of actually calming down, then what's the point. I think these gadgets are trying to solve a problem that meditation already handles just fine without any sensors or apps. You end up spending more time staring at the feedback than actually feeling your own body and breath. Plus the calibration never seemed to work right for me either... one session it would say I was super relaxed when I was clearly stressed out about a phone call I had to make. At the end of the day, its just a fancy way to make sitting still feel like a video game, which kind of misses the whole point of why people meditate in the first place.

gavin_kim326d ago

@mark676 you pretty much nailed it. The whole idea of needing a gadget to tell you you're relaxed is just another way we've turned everything into a productivity metric, even our own peace of mind. I see this in my building all the time with people buying smart faucets and leak sensors then getting more stressed checking the app than they ever were about a burst pipe. It's like we've forgotten what it feels like to just be present without some device giving us a grade on it. The calibration thing you mentioned is a dead giveaway too if it can't tell you're stressed about a phone call, then what is it actually measuring? Seems like we're just outsourcing our own body awareness to something that doesn't even work right half the time.