
Brain Monitors Are Going Mainstream, Despite Skepticism - prostoalex
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/internet-anything-brain-monitors-going-mainstream-despite-skepticism/
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etrautmann
EEG is a fundamentally noisy and low bandwidth measurement of neural activity.
I work with neural recordings based on intracortical electrodes with
resolution of single neurons. I think of EEG as analogous to listening to an
orchestra from outside the building. You _may_ hear that there's a bit more
brass than strings, and you might get some sense of the overall sound level,
but you won't really be hearing the music. To strain this analogy, any time
you move your facial muscles, it's like a truck driving by swamping everything
out.

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cinquemb
I work in a lab with EEG and FMRI primarily writing software for neural
feedback which involves a lot dsp and physics, and considering that spike
timing is a predominant theory in (comp)neuroscience today (and has been for
nearly 40 years, yet no more fundamental understanding… go figure…), I think
it would be an understatement to say that the level mathematical and physics
rigor/theory applied by most people in the field is considerably lacking… if
not a joke compared to what physicists/astrophysicists have had to deal with
and have proven by experimentation in much nosier environments in the same
time frame. I really see the field bifurcating with people doing more of the
same, and those who want to import experience of modern physics…

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shas3
I am aware of theoretical physicists applying statistical mechanical
principles to understand neurons and biological neural networks (one example:
[1]). This is a reasonably hot topic in bio-physics. I am also aware of
researchers who are applying state of the art high-dimensional data analysis
to MRI, etc. (one example: [2]).

I would modify your assertion to: "this kind of application of high-level
physics and math should be more common."

[1] [https://web.stanford.edu/dept/app-physics/cgi-
bin/person/sur...](https://web.stanford.edu/dept/app-physics/cgi-
bin/person/surya-gangulijanuary-2012/)

[2]
[http://jelena.ece.cmu.edu/bimagic.html](http://jelena.ece.cmu.edu/bimagic.html)

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cinquemb
That is certainly a more diplomatic way of putting it, and I will try to use
such language in the future because its probably a lot more conductive in
exploring such with those who are interested but reluctant.

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devindotcom
These really gross, noisy EEGs are useful for some things, but they're being
peddled alongside all manner of snake oil. The structure of thought and
emotion is so complex and obscure that leading scientists are barely able to
even define it, much less detect it with powerful, invasive tech — much less
again with this type of device.

If you find using an EEG device improves your life in some way, that's great -
go for it. But exercise skepticism when it comes to the claims being made
about just what is being detected here and with what level of accuracy and
precision.

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alecrasmussen
What kind of data can monitors like this actually collect out-of-the-box? I
know that you can train a system to recognize some pretty high-level
abstractions based on individual neural activity, but how reliably would a
similar pattern-recognition mechanism work across a larger population?

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bgalbraith
These consumer-targeted devices are predominantly used to detect and act on
changes in the relative power of certain frequency bands from rhythmic neural
activity. These changes in activity are common across people, and don't
require any specialized user-specific techniques to identify. For instance,
alpha wave (8-12 Hz) power is correlated with arousal/attentiveness.

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alecrasmussen
Interesting. So am I right to assume that these devices can detect a range of
emotions? It would be fascinating to incorporate some kind of iterative
feedback loop into a work of art.

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devindotcom
No, emotions are extremely complex phenomena and can't be detected with this
type of hardware.

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samstave
Exactly, you'd need a mood ring for that.

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zyxley
This seems neat, but I'd like to see a study some sort on what sort of
benefits (if any) it has over the long term.

It would be interesting to see if developers of these kinds of devices can
eventually progress to one reliably driving a keyboard at anything approaching
normal typing speed.

