Emotiv - Brain Computer Interface Technology

I don't know much about this offering, and I am not a neuroscientist/md, but I do know many well known and respected neurologists/epeleptologists and have worked with them for quite a while (I currently work in the Dept. of Neurology at a very well known institution). Nevertheless, even I know that signals acquired from surface electrodes are very difficult to "read" let alone useful to manipulate anything. For one, a patient who is awake and moving will generate a very difficult to ascertain signal to noise ratio due to too much muscle artifact. The best/most reliable I have seen via surface electrodes are simple binary commands along the lines of "move the dot on the screen up or down" (my brother did that as his senior thesis for his undergrad bio-engineering major).

Now, the guys at emotiv may have devised a way to enhance the electrodes and/or filter out artifact but I would really have to put this to some of my scientist buddies who would actually know what is going on under the hood here. I am inclined to think they have not because I haven't heard any excitement from any of the neurologists in the epilepsy division. I've seen expert technicians actually apply electrodes both surface and implanted (aka. in the operating room with ones brain exposed). Let's talk surface. There is a lot of expert care and skill that goes into setting up electrodes (and in specific places). On top of that, the electrodes are generally coated with a gel. All of this to enhance the electrical signal. The headset from emotiv looks like it is dry and how do you know if it is positioned properly?

tl;dr, I would love to think this has real value but I just don't think so.

This technology is cool, yes, but it works pretty terribly. I've done work with this device in my postdoc, and you really can't get any useful signals from it. There is another company similar to this one - NeuroSky, google it - and they're just as bad. The technology for reliably obtaining differentiable neural signals using non-glue/screw electrodes is just not ready for production yet.

From what I understand reading about this a few years ago: EEG with this kind of external equipment can't read more than one strong impulse signal at a time(that would be a simple detection, binary on or off), and certainly can't locate signal origin.

So all the peripheral sensors detecting facial muscle movement do the real work. Seems pretty dishonest to claim brain interface.

Am I misinformed? We're all waiting for this technology to develop, that creates a big opportunity for misdirection.

Thanks for all the posts, that point out, that the technology is still unreliable.

But com'on people, this is exciting! Who knows what great ideas might come out of this, now, that there is an affordable, commercial product. Ideas are made out of ideas. And so are applications made out of applications.

I wonder if playing games like "Spirit Mountain Demo Game" can change your mental awareness and maybe even concentration abilities.

and here's some software: https://github.com/qdot/emokit/

Another player to watch in this space is NeuroVigil. Right now they're mainly focused on EEG for healthcare applications, but their technology could be modified for other use cases.

http://www.neurovigil.com/

Streaming EEG using websockets and the emokit library (just POC, rate is very low so all data are essentially noise): http://makemyactionschainreactions.net/eeg/

Interesting TED talk by Emotiv founder: http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_br...