Category: EEG

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Muse Set to Launch a VR Compatible EEG Headband

Muse is a meditation company known for its EEG headbands that are focused on mental wellness, especially when it comes to meditation and sleep. It has now revealed plans to enter the virtual reality (VR) market building a new EEG headband designed to fit the most popular headsets including Meta Quest 2.

Muse VR logo

The new VR headband will be built off of Interaxon Inc.’s (Muse’s parent company) second-generation EEG headband, the Muse S. No images of the Muse S-VR headband have been released just yet as it’s still under development, with a launch currently slated for Q2 2022. It’ll feature the company’s four-channel EEG system with PPG, ECG, EMG (muscle tension), and EOG (ocular movements) biosensing capabilities.

Ahead of the hardware launch, Muse has released the VR software development kit (SDK) in beta form, supporting Android, iOS, Windows, Unity, and Unreal game engines.

Muse sees a lot of potential in the integration of biosensor data into Web3 and the metaverse, where users are looking for new ways to improve their mental performance and fitness. The EEG headband provides real-time access to brain and heart biosignals, ideal for medical, educational and training applications currently being developed for VR.

Muse

“Soon, the broadly adopted technology and paradigms that we use to control and interact with our environment  – and with each other – will dramatically change. Our interactions with the built environment, communications systems, entertainment platforms, transportation systems, social platforms, etc  – will all be enhanced by technology that personalizes our experiences by sensing, analyzing, interpreting, and adapting to our arousal level, our cognitive status, and to our mood,” said Interaxon’s Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Walter Greenleaf in a statement. “Precision analytics driven by biosensor and physiological inputs, in real-time, are a key component to providing substantially more engaging and more personalized immersive digital experiences.”

Muse hasn’t said if it has found any VR SDK partners or teamed up with applications to utilise the new headband just yet. However, the idea of meditation and mental wellness in VR is nothing new, with apps already available for most headsets. And then you’ve got the likes of Vive Flow, the latest VR device from HTC that’s been entirely promoted as a way to relax and switch off from the world.

If you’re not too keen on more sensors tracking what your body is doing in VR then we’ve got some bad news, that’s exactly where things are going. Meta’s Project Cambria will have a raft of eye and face tracking sensors, PlayStation VR2 will get eye tracking and HTC Vive already has add-on modules for tracking your face and body movements. All so VR can be as immersive as possible.

Gmw3 will continue its coverage of the Muse S-VR headband, reporting back with further updates.

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Advanced Brain Monitoring EEG Metrics and Experimental VR Treatments for Neurodegenerative Diseases

chris-berkaAdvanced Brain Monitoring is a 17-year old neurotechnology company that has been able to extract a lot of really useful information from EEG data. They’ve developed specific EEG Metrics for drowsiness, inducing flow states, engagement, stress, emotion, and empathy as well as biomarkers for different types of cognitive impairment. They’ve also developed a brain-computer interface that can be integrated with a VR headset, which has allowed them to do a couple of VR medical applications for PTSD exposure therapy as well as some experimental VR treatments for neurodegenerative diseases like Dementia.

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I had a chance to catch up with Advanced Brain Monitoring’s CEO and co-founder Chris Berka at the Experiential Technology conference where we talked about their different neurotechnology applications ranging from medical treatments, cognitive enhancement, accelerated learning, and performance training processes that guide athletes into optimal physiological flow states.

Advanced Brain Monitoring operates within the context of a medical application with an institutional review board and HIPAA-mandated privacy protocols, and so we also talked about the ethical implications of capturing and storing EEG data within a consumer context. She says, “That’s a huge challenge, and I don’t think that all of the relevant players and stakeholders have completely thought through that issue.”

They’ve developed a portfolio of biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s Disease, Huntington’s Disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment, Frontal Temporal Dementia, Lewy Body Dementia, Parkinison’s Disease. They’ve shown that it’s possible to detect a number of medical conditions based upon EEG data, which raises additional ethical questions for any future consumer-based VR company who records and stores EEG data. What is their disclosure or privacy-protection obligations if they are able to potentially detect a number of different medical conditions before you’re aware of them?

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The convergence of EEG and VR is still in the DIY and experimental phases with custom integrated B2B solutions that are coming soon from companies like Mindmaze, but it’s still pretty early for consumer-based applications for EEG and VR. Any integration would have to require piecing together hardware options from companies like Advanced Brain Monitoring or the OpenBCI project, but then you’d also likely need to roll your own custom applications.

There are a lot of exciting biofeedback-driven mindfulness applications or accelerated learning and training applications that will start to become more available, but that some of the first EEG and VR integrations will likely be within the context of medical applications like neurorehabilitation, exposure therapy, and potential treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.

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