Mind Monitor

Hi Everyone,

First of all, thank you very much James for the fantastic app.
I am using it for both my own meditation progress and for some adhd related assessment with my 12 yrs old son
(formally diagnosed with Inattentive ADD and currently on 20mg of Vyvanse daily).

I am trying to explore Neurofeedback to help my kid to leave a decent life without medication in the future.

I do have some theoretical knowledge of eeg, including the mess related to definition of brainwave "bands":
http://sapienlabs.org/the-remarkable-in ... finitions/

and possible differences depending on the age:
http://sapienlabs.co/eeg-infancy-adulthood/

and various Neurofeedback protocols.
Also some matlab/eeglab and python experience related to processing raw eeg data.

The more I read the more questions I have of course

The first one to James:
Do I understand it correctly that the values of various "bands" are not calculated by the app but by the Muse firmware/software and may differ when
performing your own FFT and wavelets operations to display time-frequency information ?

To the broader community:
1. Could someone list typical mental activity tests that should show an evident characteristic pattern of dominant bands
like counting backwards from large numbers by more than 1, focus on breath, or imagining stressful situations ?

2. I am looking for someone with similar interest and in a similar situation who has an opportunity to take eeg readings both on and off adhd stimulant medication to exchange ideas and experiences.

3. Also all __first-hand__ info / experience related to DIY Neurofeedback in ADHD especially related to objectively measured (via eeg analysis) progress over time.

I have 2 Muse 2 headsets and 8 channel Cyton OpenBCI setup.

Any suggestions and links to verified sources with useful practical information would be highly appreciated.

Peter

Regarding FFT:

The band calculations show in the app are calculated by Interaxon's algorithm from their closed source SDK, which is compiled into my own code in Mind Monitor. The calculations are done using the RAW EEG data, so you should be able to calculate the exact same values by doing your own FFT.

The caveat to that is that Interaxon do some data clean up as part of their calculation, to remove eye blinks, jaw clenching and power line noise as part of that.

Without knowing their exact algorithm, your results from MATLAB may differ, but technically it should be possible to replicate the exact results as all the source data is the same. In their old documentation they said that they were calculating on a 256 sample set at 10Hz intervals, but that's all the details they provided.

Thank you James for your quick response.
I got it now.

Regards
Peter

Hi Peter,

To your question: "1. Could someone list typical mental activity tests that should show an evident characteristic pattern of dominant bands
like counting backwards from large numbers by more than 1, focus on breath, or imagining stressful situations ?"

While not directly answering your question, I do wonder whether yourself or the community have done any work in relation to monitoring 'state' changes in the brain. I personally categorize two areas of interest 1) ability to maintain long term focus or relaxation and 2) the ability to quickly switch from say a focus state to a relaxation state. The latter, for me at least, seems to be a lot more powerful (hectic day, high stress, needing to quickly release tension/set intention between activities).

So to help continue the conversation, here's my first attempt at baselining a focus period (minute 1) followed immediately (to the second) 2 minutes of meditation. It's neat to see the drastic change in brain "state" via the specific wave patterns.

Garrett

(No plans for ADHD yet, but I wonder what kind of baseline you can establish and whether certain practices...say 1) or 2) above, may show variations to that baseline; that you can then carefully associate to positive changes to say mental state or focus)

Hi Garrett,

Thank you for responding.
I will pick it up and continue (as time permits) as this is pretty vital for me now and need to be sure that I understand the data correctly and first of all
that I am able to collect it properly.
One thing I will do with muse is ignoring completely the the T9 and T10 values and rely only on the AF7 AF8 (making sure they are actually that high really) and the AUX electrode in the (initially) Cz position.
I will also test differences between 2 different Muse 2s I own and later with OpenBCI.
I think the start should be a simple few minutes test with eyes closed to find the actual value of the peak alpha as this differs between people and also changes depending on the age.
I will later post here my tests.

Peter

I myself have had issues with controlling my ADD since I was a child. I was introduced to adderall when I was in my mid 20s and it changed my life in a massive way. I want to start with a story from when I was a child. I hope it may help make sense. I was about 6 or 7 I was in the doctors office. Those finger heart rate monitors had just came out and they stuck one in my finger. With in a few minutes I noticed the line on the monitor moved with my finger. If I lived my finger up the line went higher if I moved it down it went down further. Then I figured out I could use the monitor to control my heart beat. I would speed it up then slow it way down. I was fascinated and every time I went to the doctors was another chance to practice.

Looking at the line graphing in mind monitor reminded me of this fact. So I decided to see if I could actively switch active waves. I found that my delta band was dominate over all other. It didn’t matter if I had my eyes open or closed. From what I have been told on this board and read else where is Alpha band is supposed to dominate with eyes open and delta with eyes closed and relaxed.

Now I am able to actively switch. What I am starting to find is everytime my ADD anxiety starts to take over. I’ll put the muse on and sure enough I’m in Delta! Every time I’ll be in delta. Once I switch it back to Alpha I’m fine for a while. I have measured an hour after and 2 hours after and I will still be in Alpha. When the anxiety hits though I find delta is dominate amd higher than the rest. I hope this helps.

How to accomplish this exactly for your son I do not know. It may just be as simple as him understanding what is happening and have the intent to change it. Then use the monitor to see if he can switch. That is if that is the case with him too.

Have you noticed what’s dominate?

Ph also get the Opti brain which shows some cool data but also Opti train which uses the biofeed back to help you learn to focus.

For FFT most of the time you will get exactly the same results as James pointed out, but there could be some caveats. For example, the FFT points (usually 2^n) can affect the results. You may perform FFT simply as y = fft(x), or as y = fft(x, 2^n) for different n's, then you will get different results. And sometimes for power spectrum analysis we apply some special windowing and averaging (see, e.g., Welch method), which will lead to different power spectrum results. Without knowing exactly what's implemented, you may not get 100% identical results.