Measuring Brainwaves to Make a New Kind of Bike Map for NYC | Hacker News Reader

Measuring Brainwaves to Make a New Kind of Bike Map for NYC

wired.com

30 pointschippy17 comments

This isn't cool. The idea that you can 'measure' attention using a Neurosky device is fairly close to being an outright lie. To measure EEG from someone riding a bike in a controlled environment isn't an easy task. To claim that you can measure EEG using a Neurosky device as someone cycles a bike around NYC is simply lying.

This is EEG / BCI clickbait and it doesn't do people working in the field any good at all.

Came here to express something like this. Some neuroscientists I talked to recently for an article I wrote who specialize in brain-computer interfaces and neural decoding told me the mass market EEG headsets are basically trash. I don't trust any work done with them as the primary source, this project included.

The article, if you're interested: http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/wishful-thinking-can-...

I'm a neuroscientist with a decade in fMRI and that criticism is unwarranted. Scalp based EEG is inherently noisy but if hundreds toward thousands of people are using these, there's a real chance the signal could overwhelm the noise.

What's the alternative? A bunch of lab-based studies? Those have their own severe problems. Research isn't zero sum. Every little bit counts.

In order for an EEG signal to overcome noise it is typically time locked to an event and recorded multiple times. The signal is then averaged time locked to the stimuli. How is this done cycling around NYC? Do you politely ask a driver to swerve into your path 5 or 6 more times in order to get a proper sample of the event?

If you have experience in fMRI consider that this EEG is going to look like continual gradient and line noise artefacts, potentially highly correlated to the type of road surface the bike is currently on. Please explain how this can be 'averaged out' in order to obtain a signal.

I'm also work in (applied) cognitive neuroscience and disagree with respect to the utility of these studies (ie "every little bit counts"). Pop-neuroscience articles that make large claims have the potential to poison the well in terms of the public's interest in, and the reputation of, neuroscience. Too much hype in a field has the potential to create a backlash, as in the "AI Winter" of the 1980s.

I've watched fMRI (the God region of the brain!) studies poison the well. Pop-science is an endless, multimedia beast. Research that replicates is truth winning out. Everything else, including many high profile journal articles, is just noise.

Nice article - I saw Gallant present his labs research in London. It's incredibly cool and is actually real.

As far as I know the heavy hitters in the European BCI community stated that they found no reasonable evidence that mass market EEG headsets worked. Depending on the specialism some labs still publish research using them.

Those are very strong statements without any evidence cited. Yes, bike riding is hard, but a bunch of clinical research studies aren't uniquely special or more accurate, not even with more frequent measurements or studier electrode to scalp adhesives.

Clinical EEG research studies are far more accurate. I don't citations to claim that a single channel dry electrode Neurosky device doesn't compare to a high density Guger Technologies, Biosemi or a Brain Products amplifier.

Of course the quality of the electrode to scalp contact makes a difference, you can't get dry electrode systems on the cheap. If you could it wouldn't be an active area of research and funding.

Electrical activity from the muscles (EMG) is of larger magnitude than activity from the brain (EEG) and tends to saturate EEG recordings during vigorous movement unless a signal processing technique (such as blind source separation) is used to distinguish the two sources.

The map contained in this article may not represent the most scientific measurement, given that each street was mapped once by one person, but they had to start somewhere. This is a brilliant idea, though.

I've always been interested in the idea of collecting additional layers of information. Places are associated with emotions and we don't have any good ways of capturing that right now. I can think of several interesting future applications of this concept, given advances in technology and cultural adoption. It would be interesting to look at a map of the city and see where people where most happy, inspired or awed so that you could go there if you're feeling down. You could also get an idea of places to avoid, other than the obvious dark alleys. Law enforcement could map the emotional states of victims and suspects in space to better understand the course of events in a crime, or people could map their daily feelings of anxiety to better understand what triggers their own happiness. Employers could find out what areas of their office cause the most unhappiness (meeting rooms?) and the most relaxation, and potential employees could get an overall gauge of the stress level of a given work environment. It almost seems like something out of Star Trek. Someone pulls out their tricorder and says "We don't know what happened to the last people who beamed down here, but it says they were very anxious and afraid. Set phasers to stun."

There are questions about the general efficacy of measuring brainwaves, but receiving more information is generally a good thing. Biking seems like a good place to start, if only because people are already wearing bulky helmets so recording equipment won't look or feel too out of place. This concept obviously as a long way to go, but there's a lot of potential. Anything that allows people to see the world in a new way can have a big impact, even if it isn't immediately clear how.

There are questions about the general efficacy of measuring brainwaves

I'm afraid this underestimates the case somewhat. As I wrote in another comment, people in the field have been very frank with me in their total distrust of toy systems like Neurosky. Anyone claiming to track moods or mind states right now is hugely overstating their capabilities. I like the idea as much as the next guy, but at the present it's not questionable, it's simply impossible. We don't have the tools or the data with which to adequately apply them.

You are greatly overstating the complaints. It's not impossible at all. These efforts trade precision and control for quantity and real world conditions. That's a very fair trade off and the results remain to be seen and improved upon, not dismissed out of hand.

This reminds me of the DUMBO Neural Cartography by a team at the Architecture School at Columbia: http://www.thecloudlab.org/dumbo_neural_cartography.html

This is really cool, if they can get a decent sample size I bet this will become quite enlightening. Until then, just cool.

I really love this work by Arlene and her team but the graphic here is each street mapped on one ride by one rider.

Yeah, but they have a concept. I really hope they follow through with it.

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