Will this work????

[CuriousGorge]

Hey - my kid is doing a research project on brain entrainment to music. Resources are limited. Obviously a $7K EEG would be better - but would this be able to provide enough data to show how strongly the brain entrains to the music?

* What kind of data can MindMatter pull out of the Muse headbands?

* Could this data be used to measure entrainment levels?

* What should we be looking for? The amplitude, sure - but is there any other more quantitative or qualitative measures that I might not know?

* What data would be missed by this vs going with an EEG providing the raw data?


Thanks!!!

[James]

I'm not really sure what you're asking for regarding an "entrainment level"?

You could certainly see if certain music makes you more relaxed by measuring relative Alpha and seeing which music makes it higher on average verses a base line data set.

You can see all the data that Mind Monitor can read in the FAQ section of the website here: https://mind-monitor.com/FAQ.php#csvspec

Note that Mind Monitor does give you the ability to record RAW EEG, but analysing this is likely way beyond what a kid can do for a school project.
With that being said, if your "kid" is more in their 30's than 10's, there are scripts on the website for importing data into MatLAB where you can run complex data analyses like FFTs to get discrete frequency bin power values.

[James]

I forgot to add, that espically with kids, it's worth noting that the Muse works best when someone is stationary!

Any facial muscle movement will get picked up by the electrodes and will overwhelm the tiny electric signals from the brain, making the data un-usable... so probably best to avoid head banging along to Bohemian Rhapsody!

[CuriousGorge]

Great tip about being stationary.

When resonators are coupled, they tend to synch up, and this is entrainment. It is now well established in the lit that brains entrain to music. It isn't about relaxing - I'll need to measure the peaks and the precise frequency at least - being an artifact of resonance, the frequencies will synch up along the harmonic sequence

[CuriousGorge]

Done some more research and yeah, he'll definitely be doing FFTs in MatLAB. It is a heavy lift but that's what he signed up for. Do you know where would I find those scripts? With the FFT data, we'll get a plot of the component frequencies and their relative strengths, right? That should give us the data we're looking for.

Would a Flowtime headband work? If not, would you recommend the Muse S or the Muse 2?

Thanks!