EEG

intro

Regularly students discover EEG brain sensors. These sensors are very attractive!

And the price is between 100 and 1000 euro's.

You should certainly use it and experiment with it. Depending on your goal it might work.

Goals for which the EEG brain device in your project could work:

• investigating devices which might work in the future.
• speculative design, where you suggest possible applications, and then hope that a technician will find a way to make it work.

Goals for which the EEG brain device doesn't work, but it might be fun:

• measuring emotions with accuracy and using these "real" measured emotions in some way.

Goals for which your project will certainly end up in a real disaster:

• steering your car or anything else which might go wrong with your brain sensor device.

Neurosky Mindwave (amazon.nl)

Student projects

Jasna Rokegem (Fashion Design) was one of the first students graduating with a "Fashion on brainwaves" project. She founded her own company on this idea after graduating. She exploits the "speculative" goal.

For her graduation she made these outfits.

• an outfit with a collar rising and lowering, depending on stress level.
• an outfit changing between a female and a male silhouet
• an outfit which shows "emotions" as color patterns on the back

https://www.jasnarok.com/work/#fashion-on-brainwaves

possible goals

Emotion measurement One goal students like is the measurement of "emotions". The idea of having emotions seems so simple. Say ... Happiness, isn't that simple? No! There has been an debate over centuries what it exactly is this "happiness". Many good texts about "happiness" if you are interested, take a bit of time reading these texts...say 20 years?

So what is happiness, is difficult. But this EEG device just "measures"? So it must be clear? No, because the EEG device produces "numbers", many numbers every second. Somebody - a person, like you and me - has to program an algorithm which interpreted these data, and tells you: this is happiness. If the literature indicates how wide the ideas of happiness differ, then how for this programming person to "know" what numbers represent "happiness"?

Steering devices with brain waves This seems more straightforward. You could use pattern recognition. Then you avoid the problem of "what is happiness". Using AI for getting it right, without understanding the underlying principle. Even then. For AI to work, you need thousands of times telling the device this was right, this was left. And every person has a slightly different "brain"...

Driving a car with your brain There is a study about the "steering" possibilities. Rather devastating for the idea that you can drive a car with your brain waves. Even if the accuracy was 90%, then there would be many more accidents as we now have. Strange idea by the way, because ... what is the difference, don't we use our brain also for avoiding accidents? The difference is again: interpretation by algorithms. In the case of EEG brain waves driving the car, there is a person - programmer, in between us and the car.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4806709/

my own experiments

You can rely on research by others, but you should also perform your own experiments.

When Jasna Rokegem came to me with the brain sensor I started doing experiments, it was the Neurosky Mindwave, an earlier version, 1 "dry" forehead sensor. The results were not convincing. I was puzzled, because it was so bad, that I suspected to do something wrong. The signals just didn't make sense at all. I looked at reports from other people and they also confirmed that the results were sometimes right, sometimes wrong. This Mindwave sensor was in that time used in a game steering pushing a ball towards the other using brain waves. So "steering".

In the City Lab, our school had the Emotiv. This device had 14 sensors! But these sensors were the "wet" version. And the sockets were already corroded. Having this Emotiv on, the interpretation of the signals told me I was super concentrated at one moment and immediately after that totally un-concentrated.

check? Even if these results were "true", it is impossible to check, because you cannot put two devices on your head. (I tried.) If you cannot "check" the results of a sensor in the same situation (time and person), how can you ever be sure?

research

scientific

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4806709/

consumer comparison

http://learn.neurotechedu.com/headsets/

significant experiments

Arnon Grunberg

Although not one of the devices above mentioned, Arnon Grunberg, one of the well known Dutch writers did an interesting experiment, wiring himself to a headset with many electrodes. The goal was to record his emotions while writing and then compare the measurements of his emotions with the measurements of the readers of his text. This experiment failed because the researchers could not find "his" emotions while writing. The explanation was that - probably - writing is rational, and not emotional.

Dutch reports

• http://www.volkskrant.nl/dossier-arnon-grunberg-doorgemeten/proefkonijn-grunberg-hoe-werkt-een-schrijversbrein~a3547359/
• http://www.gezond24.nl/tv-uitzending/g24_954/De-emoties-van-Arnon-Grunberg-1
• http://www.gezond24.nl/tv-uitzending/g24_2196/De-emoties-van-Arnon-Grunberg-2

English:

• https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/books/arnon-grunberg-is-writing-while-connected-to-electrodes.html

links

Arnon Grunberg

Dutch reports

http://www.volkskrant.nl/dossier-arnon-grunberg-doorgemeten/proefkonijn-grunberg-hoe-werkt-een-schrijversbrein~a3547359/

http://www.gezond24.nl/tv-uitzending/g24_954/De-emoties-van-Arnon-Grunberg-1

http://www.gezond24.nl/tv-uitzending/g24_2196/De-emoties-van-Arnon-Grunberg-2

English:

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/books/arnon-grunberg-is-writing-while-connected-to-electrodes.html