Muse understands your mind

A new sensor designed by a Canadian company called InteraXon that is in the market now has been christened as Muse and is described as a stylish and modern brainwave reader.

MP

The very first brain sensors were developed by a Japanese company called Neurosky. It was a pair of electrical cat ears that sat on your head, and would wiggle according to your thoughts and feelings.

Now, there is another sensor in the market that claims to perform a brain sensing task similar to the previous one. The sensor has been designed by a Canadian company called InteraXon and they have crowd – funded it on Indiegogo. Christened Muse, the device is described as a stylish and modern brainwave reader.

It has curved ends that tuck behind your ears and is supposed to track the various moods you go through, while looking for indications of focus and stress or concentration. Well, it definitely is not as bad as cat ears.

The headband works like a portable EEG (electroencephalograph), and picks up signals that the brain creates from the pings that are generated when neurons fire signals. The company has developed proprietary algorithms that detect change in the patterns that indicate stress, focus, and relaxation from the whole mix of electromagnetic signals registered by Muse.

The device, with a built – in Bluetooth, transfers the data to its corresponding smartphone app that visually shows you the way your brain’s ticking.

Not a mind reader

Muse is not a mind reader, and is not designed to read what you are thinking. Trevor Colemen, the cofounder of InteraXon, says that it is a like a heart – rate monitor for the brain. Just the way a heart – rate monitor can detect the level of activity, but not the activity itself, Muse can detect the level of brain activity and not the specific thought itself.

The people at the company hope that the device will be used for more than just mental calisthenics, and will communicate properly with your computer or phone. For developers, the company is planning to launch a Software Development Kit next year. Early on, the company had built a beer tap that would be controlled by thoughts, and they demonstrated it at various events. The application was to let you open and close a beer tap just by thinking about it.

The core competency of the company was built in the laboratory of Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto. The company was founded by Mann, who is on the board as an adviser.

The device costs $299. This device can help you in taking care of yourself by keeping a check on your stress levels!