>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.
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.
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.
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.
1) A recently discovered very strong correlation (needs further longitudinal study) between mindfulness practice and a reduced decline in mental performance with age.
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.
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.
But meditating for 2-3 hours PER DAY seems a bit excessive, no?
Then meditating for 10-16 hours per days seems really excessive.
It's almost like you're saying, these people who meditate, they don't really meditate, they just pay lip service. To meditate you have to be dedicated and spend 2-3 hours per day doing it if you're going to it correctly.
A bit judgmental aye? Reads to me like the comment is based on the meditator's experience and isn't an injunction on other, but an observation based on experience.
I think it's an important observation to point out to that this device may intact hinder the desired effects of (at least) zazen.
People watch TV or play games for mutiple hours, meditating 2-3hours seems hardly excessive in light of that.
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...
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.
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.
It doesn't seem to produce any acute effects. The research I've read before buying this seems to indicate it's a chronic effect over time. Unfortunately I don't have the patience to really do a sham/active test cycle, so I've been just alternating pulse/continuous/random cycles 3-4 times per week, 10-20 minutes per session.
Anecdotally it seems to work well. My major reason for investing into tDCS was to improve working memory, as I strongly believe I was rapidly deteriorating in that realm despite near-abstinence from alcohol and other drugs. In that regard, it seems to work well, but it could easily be a placebo effect from wearing a cool helmet.
If I had to guess I'd say I'm 75% confident that foc.us has had a material positive effect on my working memory and cognitive functions. I can't say I am 90-95% confident and I'm not sure I ever will be, since doing a rigorous test is near impossible without a partner controlling the sham effects, and even then it's for personal use and not a research study so to speak.
Not sure I would enthusiastically recommend it but the research out there points in a solid - if not dramatic - direction.
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
59 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadCalibrated for whom?
http://www.choosemuse.com/pages/faq#using
says that there is a 1 minute calibration period at the beginning of each use.
is the plan that people wear this around day to day??
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...
Would love to train my focus more.
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/...
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.
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.
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.
Then meditating for 10-16 hours per days seems really excessive.
It's almost like you're saying, these people who meditate, they don't really meditate, they just pay lip service. To meditate you have to be dedicated and spend 2-3 hours per day doing it if you're going to it correctly.
I think it's an important observation to point out to that this device may intact hinder the desired effects of (at least) zazen.
People watch TV or play games for mutiple hours, meditating 2-3hours seems hardly excessive in light of that.
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...
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.
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.
[0] http://www.thinkmelon.com/
Foc.us does. I have one. Works well.
EDIT: Downvoted for providing a link? I don't work for Foc.us or anything.
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?
Anecdotally it seems to work well. My major reason for investing into tDCS was to improve working memory, as I strongly believe I was rapidly deteriorating in that realm despite near-abstinence from alcohol and other drugs. In that regard, it seems to work well, but it could easily be a placebo effect from wearing a cool helmet.
If I had to guess I'd say I'm 75% confident that foc.us has had a material positive effect on my working memory and cognitive functions. I can't say I am 90-95% confident and I'm not sure I ever will be, since doing a rigorous test is near impossible without a partner controlling the sham effects, and even then it's for personal use and not a research study so to speak.
Not sure I would enthusiastically recommend it but the research out there points in a solid - if not dramatic - direction.
The company behind Muse.
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!
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.
Talk about the software connected to this..
Anyone spending 300$ for so little information?
So who will make the first heroine headband ? It will probably need outputs as well as inputs though.