Ten years ago The Fitbit was the most sophisticated wearable you could get. The Apple Watch quickly supplanted it, quickly becoming the best-selling smartwatch in the world. Then came the sleeker, more understated Oura ring.
Now there’s a recent breed of wearable device — one made with your head in mind. Instead of tracking step counts, heart rate and skin temperature, these devices are designed to read brain waves. Using electroencephalography (EEG), they detect electrical impulses produced by the brain and operate artificial intelligence to understand them.
Take Eleminda for example. Instead of simply tracking your sleep, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company’s device aims to improve it. The $350 Elemind headband looks straight out of my head Star Trek and aims to improve sleep quality. It detects a person’s brain signals to find out whether they are asleep or awake, and provides a type of acoustic stimulation called pink noise to shift the brain from wakefulness patterns to delta waves, which represent deeper sleep. In small trial with 21 participantsthe device helped more than three-quarters of them fall asleep faster.
If you’d rather work smarter than harder, you can buy a pair of $500 headphones from Boston-based Neurable to boost your productivity. Equipped with EEG sensors, the headphones track concentration-related brain activity – or beta waves – to let users know how focused they are. When I tried them last year, they confirmed what I already suspected: I’m most focused in the mornings. The device also prompts you to take a break from time to time if it thinks you’ve been concentrating too deeply for too long. This is a feature I appreciate as someone who spends a lot of time in front of a computer screen.
Apple is also working on wearable brain technology. Business filed a patent in 2023 for EEG-sensing AirPods, although they haven’t hit the market yet. However, earlier this year Apple released a new accessibility feature to enable Vision Pro to be controlled using brain waves instead of physical movement. This means that the augmented reality headset can now be integrated with brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs – systems that read brain signals to allow users to control devices with their thoughts.
One neurotechnology company, Cognixion, is already using Apple’s recent feature. The Santa Barbara, California-based startup has created an augmented reality app to run on the Vision Pro device and a custom headband that detects brain signals. For now, Cognixion is focused on using this technology to restore communication to people with speech disorders caused by paralysis. However, it’s not strenuous to imagine how the BCI-equipped Vision Pro could be adopted by the wider population for purposes such as gaming or texting with the mind.
Earlier this year, I spoke with Andreas Melhede of Elata Biosciences, who is building what he calls the “Open Internet of Brains,” an open-source network where anyone can create a neuroscience application that will run on an EEG device. The nonprofit created its own Pong device and app, which it demonstrated this fall at a crypto conference in Singapore. About 30 people gathered on a restaurant patio to take part in a Pong tournament, but instead of hand-held controllers, participants were equipped with headphones that track their brain signals. Their goal: hit the ball on the screen with a paddle using only your thoughts.