With new gadgets hitting the market regularly, offering to tell you all from your heart rate to how many calories you have eaten, it’s about time for your brain to actually get a comparable unit. The brain sensing headband is such a gadget.
Research has shown benefits such as the increased density of grey matter, decreased prefrontal cortex thinning, decreased activation of the amygdala, and increased resistance, essentially an overall beneficial improvement in the brain’s shape and function after wearing an EEG headband unit.
So, before you search for “best bath salts” read the article.
How Do the Headbands Work?
In general, neurologists oppose these brain-sensing systems and warn of the danger of overstating what these machines should do. The brain-sensing headband, however, fulfills its promises; to facilitate meditation, it monitors brainwaves.
The machines have sensors designed to monitor and quantify brain activity by EEG. The random behavior of neurons that produce electric frequencies is observed by these sensors. When they’re done, you can access the measurements through Bluetooth on a tablet or smartphone.
Benefits of Using EEG Headbands
Here are some of the benefits I have found worth discussing.
#1 Helps You Meditate
Brain sensing headbands tracks brain waves using EEG technologies and provides users real-time input on their brain function as they meditate. It gives you auditory updates about your meditation in real-time by converting your brain impulses into the sounds of wind until your meditation session starts.
When the headband senses that your brain is quiet, the app plays audio of calm winds through Bluetooth to a companion application that converts data into sound; when your brain is busy, the wind becomes more tumultuous. An app measures users’ success with charts and graphs and recommends opportunities to increase practice over time.
#2 Helps in Research & Experiments
Right now, many academic laboratories are using brain-sensing headbands. The researchers measure the brainwaves of subjects in the experiment when exhibiting signs of any disease, such as nightmares, and sleep disturbances such as sleep apnea and insomnia. These are used worldwide in sleep research laboratories.
The device is beneficial because the persons involved in these experiments are more relaxed than in a typical sleep laboratory and can be monitored for several nights, providing more exact information.
Nevertheless, the data obtained by the headband is not a substitution for polysomnography but rather a way of getting complementary data to help detect sleep disorders. Certain aspects of sleep disturbances, such as limb motions or sleepwalking, are not reported by these headbands.
#3 Track Your Progress
The headbands can show you how your brain has done from moment to moment by straightforward and easy to understand graphs after each session. Display the whole session at once, figure out how long you stayed calm during a session, and get useful tips about boosting potential scores. Its gamification tactics help to use the device every day, which is a significant novelty.
Final Note
Though the brain sensing headbands are mainly marketed as assistance products during meditation, the use cases are far more extended than that only. So, do you want to try one?
