Jun 1, 2016
Can A Brain-Machine Interface Help Train Your Mind?
Posted by Dan Faggella in categories: neuroscience, wearables
Walk into any workout facility and, odds are, you’ll see plenty of people working with a personal fitness trainer. It’s common practice to hire a trainer who can help improve your physical fitness, but is it possible to find a trainer for better mental fitness? Entrepreneur Ariel Garten founded her company, InteraXon, around this very idea. Bolstered by new advances in non-invasive brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) that can help people practice ways to reduce stress and improve cognitive abilities, Garten believes this is just the beginning of a lucrative industry.
Garten’s company manufactures a BMI called the Muse, an EEG sensor headband that monitors occipital and temporal brain waves. According to Ariel, the goal of the device is to help people understand their mental processes while at the same time learning to calm and quiet their mind at any time, with the same convenience of carrying around an iPhone.
“We don’t measure stress (with the Muse). What we’re actually measuring is a state of stable, focused attention,” Garten said. “When you hone your mind into a state of stable focused attention, what you’re able to do is resist the thoughts that you have and the distractions that you have. That helps you improve your cognitive function and attention. And, it also helps you decrease your stress, anxiety and all of the downstream physiological responses of that stress.”
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