Muse

Stay Calm & Focused

Muse is a wearable brain sensing headband. It measures your brain activity and body in real-time using EEG (Electroencephalography) sensors. There are 7 sensors, 2 on the forehead, 2 behing the ears, 3 reference sensors. Its PPG sensor measures your heart rate, while an accelerometer and gyroscope measure your breath rhythm and body movement.

The application coming with the device interprets the EEG signals through advanced processing and transforms it into audio feedback (you can choose between birds singing, rain, rainforest sounds, etc…). When your mind is calm and settled, you hear peaceful sounds; if your focus drifts, the sounds will intensify letting you know that you need to bring your attention back to your breath. Muse is the perfect tool to train your brain to focus, specially if you are starting to do daily long meditations. Muse offers 2 different devices:

  • Muse 2 headband for focus and meditation. The headband is rigid. It is one of their first design and it is still widely used amount the Muse community.
  • Muse S – an improved version of the Muse headband,  more expensive than Muse 2 but can be used at night to monitor and improve your sleep. This headband is very comfortable and its beauty is that it can be washed. You can also buy a replacement band if yours starts to wear out.         
 
 

For more information please visit Muse Website.

Muse 2

App

Results

Muse S

Split and Analyze your brainwaves - Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta

If you want to understand your brain activity during meditation or sleeping you can record your alpha, beta, gamma and delta brainwaves. There are third party programs/app that can be connected to your Muse device. For example I have been using Mind Monitor which is very easy to use – sync your Dropbox to Mind Monitor, record your session and your will get a csv file representing your brainwaves. This site then can be uploaded onto Mind Monitor Website; it will give you a graph like the one on the right with your individual alpha, beta, delta and gamma brainwaves. There is a great number of communities  on Facebook that are regularly sharing and commenting their data that can help interpreting your results. Muse has widely been used by neuroscience researchers around the world. Due to its easy use and low cost it is also accessible to anyone interested in EEG brainwaves.

Please note that it is still  a simplified version of a full EEG device as it is only mapping a part of the brain. The graphs obtained are specific to each individual. The interest in monitoring your brainwaves is to see how they evolve overtime as you become more experienced with meditation.

For more information I highly recommend Dr Cody Rall Videos – Tech for Spych – TFP. I have been following Dr Rall since using Muse – 4 years. He gives honest reviews, easy to follow tutorials to use the Muse headband and related softwares – and others headbands – and how to incorporate it to your meditation practice. He gives as well practical self- help advice to technical discourse on brain research through very interesting interviews with various neuroscientists and neurotechnology manufacturers. 

Dr Cody Rall MD

Testimonial

Like this single mother the Muse headband has really helped me to train my brain to get into stillness specially when I first started to meditate. daily.