Can you read other people’s minds — for that matter, can you really read and know your own mind?
A number of new devices are introducing a step toward sci-fi, specifically the reading of minds.
Utilizing electroencephalography, a method to record electrical activity that has been shown to represent the macroscopic activity of the surface layer of the brain underneath (commonly called EEG) companies like Muse have developed wearable headbands that read impulses in the brain from the surface of the scalp.
Think of it as a sweatband with sensors. One that helps you understand your brain, and now, use that data to your own benefit.
I’ve recently had many conversations about this ‘brain data’ and its uses in different clinical and non-clinical settings. The data set itself is theoretically infinitely interesting, but what is the underlying value? That particular question was raised several times, which I fumbled through, given I see infinite applicability (your own ‘inner neuro voice’ anyone?). But it still shows the overall stage of such a new technology and its development in the market.
What people say vs. what their minds say
Let’s illustrate the EEG’s value. Imagine a person is wearing a smart EEG headband, and you show them two paintings and ask them which they prefer. They will give you an answer and reasoning. Their EEG data will also give you an answer and, potentially, data points such as their mood, feelings when they looked at each painting, and the effect it had on them.
The data as a neurological tool in medical diagnosis or treatment is obvious, but how we might utilize it in everyday life is still a new area. Could different consumer applications utilizing EEG data help us be more in tune with our own emotions and overall inner life, and could they help us find solutions that maybe the conscious mind cannot?
How about your brain’s reactions to those shoes you are looking at online? Perhaps your brain knows you won’t be wearing them as much as you’d like to think. Or maybe it’s backward and your brain falls in love with them, and skips past your common sense. Which poses an interesting question of how well do we know our own brains in the first place?
Let’s take even an example of a simple personalization: what type of navigation app voice makes you the safest driver, i.e. keeps your brain focused and attentive?
Knowing your brain’s reactions can have a huge impact on very practical daily activities.
Filtering through the noise
Many of our partners have highlighted how the data itself from an EEG is incredibly noisy and requires sophisticated algorithms to filter out the noise to derive value. It’s also a data set that requires other data for it to be valuable, such as contextual data about the subject’s environment (e.g., what is the person doing? What is the person looking at?) and physiological data about the subject’s body and its state: e.g., how is their heart rate: is it elevated? How about their blood pressure?
This cleaning of data is highly cumbersome and work-intensive, and it calls for a solution that can be open to the market, so that not every developer or company has to resort to their own proprietary methods. It also highlights the opportunity to not only solve this problem for those interested in EEG data, but also those that wish to combine it with other data sets to derive an outcome.
What would you build with brainwaves?
With data at your fingertips, what could you build? If in the past we have built predictive applications based on deep data sets, then what is deeper than human reactions and emotions. Being able to harness that could build the most personal applications.
Yet, these are very private data sets. In order to utilize them, we need to ensure the data is empowering the individual and really driving their own agenda, no one else’s. This is where we at Prifina see tremendous potential by building applications on the users side, on user-held data, that the individual owns and uses to power applications that represent their best interests.
What could you enrich?
Imagine being able to add personal sentiment, mood and experience, to experiences, services and applications. We’ve previously discussed meditation apps lacking a feedback loop based on data, but what if they could utilize your mood to provide the best guided experiences, the best suggested meditation content and more than anything, services that work for you?
EEG in the Prifina data layer
We are working on including EEG data through the most popular ‘wearables’ into the Prifina data layer, both in its raw format as well as cleaning up the noise so developers and application builders can get access to valuable and clear data from the get go. As huge fans of developer creativity, we want to empower the market to create the most incredible consumer applications utilizing these powerful data sets, and get them the right data to use, in the right format, to drive personalized value.
Connect With Us and Stay in Touch
Prifina is building resources for developers to help create new apps that run on top of user-held data. No back-end is needed. Individual users can connect their data sources to their personal data cloud and get everyday value from their data.
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- Join our Facebook group Liberty. Equality. Data. where we share notes about Prifina’s progress.
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