Meet the EMOTIV Insight
$299 (Emotiv.com)1. Five sensors detect tiny electromagnetic waves from currents in the brain. Two sensors are placed on the forehead (left and right frontal lobe), one on the right temple (right temporal lobe), one on the left temple (left temporal lobe) and one on top of the head (parietal lobe).2. High-conductivity silicone allows the sensors to pick up signals without conductivity fluid, as sweat increases the connectivity.3. Fifth sensor does not collect brainwaves. Instead, it measures radio waves and electromagnetic waves omitted by the skin and subtracts them from the data collected from the other four nodes, ensuring that the final data is only from the brain. Sensor is tucked behind the left ear.4. Bluetooth connectivity sends raw data to phone, tablet and PC.5. Battery lasts a maximum of four hours.
RESEARCH APPLICATIONS
TrainingSerious athletes know that focus can mean the difference between victory and defeat, but cultivating that focus has always been more abstract than concrete. With the headset, Bailey believes athletes could record their brainwaves during practice and see where they start to lose focus. He also thinks coaches could get in on the action. By watching their trainees’ performance in real time, they can see dips in focus or spikes in anxiety and tell the athlete through earbuds, “You’re getting into freakout mode, bring it back down.” Once athletes have identified the places they need to maintain focus, Bailey says they can train that focus by putting themselves in stressful situations and bringing their minds back to performance mode. The headset can show them what that performance mode looks like and the best way to induce it, and the repetition would mean learning how to calm down in the heat of the game.SpectatorshipImagine watching a football game and seeing what was going through your favorite player’s mind in real time. You would be able to see the quarterback’s focus skyrocket as he launches a game-winning ball to the wide receiver, watch the kicker’s anxiety fluctuate as he prepares to sack the ball through a goal post more than 50 yards away and see brainwaves go berserk when a team wins the championship. If Hungenberg got his way, this would be the future of spectator sports. The professor believes that seeing what players are feeling during high-pressure situations would draw viewers into the action and connect them to athletes on any field.Environmental PsychologyPortable EEG technology can prove that place affects mood — as Bailey discovered when he put headsets on a few of his UTC students and had them walk down a busy road. As soon as the students turned into a park and entered the quiet green space, Bailey saw their anxiety levels drop down, and they slipped into a more meditative mindset. After processing data from their adventure activities, Bailey and his team hope to go around the city testing how different places make them feel. The project has the potential to enhance the environment physically by showing the researchers places that make people feel negative so they can push to have those locations beautified for residents.Race OrganizationEvent planners have a lot to consider when organizing a marathon, but Hungenberg hopes UTC’s research will show planners just how important it is to consider the environment. During the Chattanooga Marathon, the professor, who teaches sports management courses, had a huge spike in excitement while running through the North Shore because of its aesthetic quality. He hypothesizes that race participants will have similar spikes on more aesthetically pleasing courses, as well as when there is a “party-like atmosphere” on the sidelines. These things serve as distractions, Hungenberg says, and research has shown that more distractions lead to better performances and easier runs — as well as a way to market Chattanooga for tourism.EducationWhen he’s doing a lecture, Bailey says it takes about five minutes for students to start zoning out on him. But it’s OK, he’s that way, too. That’s why the professor hopes to use the EEG technology to see how students learn best. He would have the students wear a headset during a lecture, then have them wear one during a hands-on activity. After comparing the two, he would use the headsets to see if students work better in groups or alone. He hopes the study will bring about an educational push to get students out of the classroom.
THE STUFF UPSTAIRS
Focus: Found in the frontal lobe by measuring Beta and Gamma waves. These are the brain’s two higher-frequency wavelengths, and they indicate that the brain is processing a lot of activity.Anxiety: Found in the amygdala, buried deep in the brain. To get data, researchers must use a formula that measures between the temporal lobes, located on the sides of the head, and the parietal lobe, at the top of the head.Negative Emotion: Refers to a desire to withdraw from an undesirable situation. Processed on the right side of the frontal lobe.Positive Emotion: Refers to a desire to approach a situation — either due to happiness or anger. Processed on the left side of the frontal lobe.Excitement: A measure of how much change is occurring in the data.
"What do you think that is?"
"I don't know. Ask her!"
"No, you ask her!"
Jogging at a steady pace, Kelsey Cline listened to the couple close on her heels arguing behind her. When their whispers died down, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
"Excuse me...?" Cline turned to find a man eyeing her quizzically. He glanced back at his wife, before nodding at the plastic contraption tangled in Cline's hair. "What's on your head?"
Stifling a laugh, Cline fiddled with the device hugging her scalp. They were not the first runners that day befuddled by her headgear.
All day, as she made her way through the Chattanooga Marathon, Cline had been greeted with raised eyebrows and curious stares. Some had pointed excitedly, bragging that they had read about the gadget hooked to her crown, while others had offered sympathy for her supposed epilepsy, mistaking the object for a device that prevents seizures.
No matter where she went, people wanted to know more about the mysterious contraption. Cline would explain that the device was a wireless brain scanner, a product of the new technology company EMOTIV and a part of research at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. But there was one thing she forgot to mention. The device sitting on her head was also the future.
Reading Minds
For years, scholars have questioned what happens to the body during exercise, but Drew Bailey, assistant professor at UTC's Health & Human Performance, was far more interested in what happens in the mind.
Bailey's interest manifested when he started using armbands to measure his students' energy expenditure while rock climbing. While conducting the study, he noticed something unusual: The students burnt more energy rappelling than climbing.
"It doesn't make sense if you've ever done either one, because rappelling's just walking backward," Bailey says.
Convinced the energy drainage was more mental than physical, the professor started searching for a way to sneak a peek into his students' minds. His search led him to EMOTIV, a San Francisco neuroengineering company whose interface technology has advanced the understanding of the human brain. Bailey was entranced by the company's electroencephalography (EEG) devices, specifically the EMOTIV Insight. The lightweight Insight headpiece records electromagnetic signals caused by neurons firing in the brain, a telltale sign of cognitive processes.
While the device essentially "reads" minds, the technology is far from new. Scientists have been researching the brain with EEG technology since the 1950s. What sets EMOTIV's headset apart, however, is its portability. Standard EEG devices are large caps with up to 50 or more electrodes hooked up to them, and each electrode is wired to a computer. The complex machine records accurate data, but its stationary nature makes it difficult to learn about the brain processes outside of a laboratory.
In the past, researchers have tried to see running's effect on the mind by recording subjects' brain activity, letting them out of the room to run, then hooking them back up to the cumbersome device when they had finished their exercise. The results, Bailey says, were less than impressive.
With EMOTIV's portable headsets, however, research can be done anywhere in the world - and so far, it has been. Some have used the Insight's wireless technology to measure brain activity when sleeping. Others have used its 14-sensor sister, the Epoc, to translate brainwaves into computer code, allowing the user to control characters in video games and even pilot cars and drones. But as far as Bailey and his team know, they are the only ones using the device to measure the brain activity of rappellers and marathon runners.
"I don't think anyone else has been crazy enough to try it," says Alex Cruikshank, general project manager at the Chattanooga branch of Carbon Five, a software development and design firm.
Cruikshank was recruited to create software that would make the headset's data easier to understand, and after two months battling with and testing the device, he knew why so few had used it to study adventure sports.
The headset touts five sensors that measure the whole brain, as opposed to the 50 on ye olde time EEG devices. However, all five are sensitive, and the shaking from excessive movement could distort the data - just like it did for Cline, whose device was repeatedly jostled loose during the Chattanooga Marathon.
Luckily, Cruikshank joined the team looking for a challenge. He powered through connectivity issues and battery swaps knowing that if any city deserved to pioneer the next advance in outdoor adventure research, it was the daredevil-populated "Gig City," a playground for outdoorsmen and technological innovators alike.
"I think Chattanooga really wants that - that we're the only people doing this right now," Cruikshank says. Despite the exclusivity, he hopes other Scenic City residents will answer the call to add to the scientific research. "If it's spread out in Chattanooga, that would look pretty good for us, too," he laughs. "I wouldn't be upset about that."
Though the team hopes to continue adding to its research before definitively interpreting the meaning behind the data, Bailey and Cruikshank shared an overview of everything they've discovered so far.
What Goes Up...
Armed with UTC's newly purchased EMOTIV devices, Bailey set out to discover why his students were burning more energy rappelling than climbing.
The professor enlisted 10 students from the university's Adventure Tourism course and equipped each one with a heart rate-monitoring armband and a brainwave scanning headset, allowing him to see the emotions registering in different regions of their brains while analyzing the changes in their bodies. Essentially, the dual technology granted him access to both the physical and mental experience.
After collecting the data, Bailey broke it up into four parts: standing at the top if the cliff; pushing off the edge; rappelling down the wall; and landing on the ground. Of these four parts, the professor consistently found that pushing off the edge was the greatest mental challenge.
Each time a student leaned over the edge, the headset recorded a spike in anxiety and negative emotion - right when the armband told him the student was burning the most energy. The mental stress registered across the board; students fell victim to the energy-draining anxiety spike no matter what their skill level.
"The worst part is trusting that rope and leaning all the way back over that edge," says Bailey.
After overcoming that hurdle, the sport became easier and much more enjoyable, according to the data. Anxiety consistently dropped after the students pushed off the ledge and started descending the wall.
"As soon as you step down and your whole body weight is hanging on the rope, you feel a lot more comfortable," Bailey explains.
Negative emotions were replaced with positive ones at a different time for each student. Some saw the positive spike while making their way down the wall, while others got their spike when they reunited with terra firma.
"A lot of them would feel successful and excited once they got down to the bottom and their feet were on the ground," says Bailey, "and a lot of them would be really excited once they got over that edge and they realized they would be fine and then they had fun."
Though Bailey says he'd like to replicate the study with more than 10 people before making any big decisions on what the data means, he believes this is proof that the technology works, and he is excited about the possible applications in the world of sports and beyond.
"Sky's kind of the limit," Bailey says. "We have a lot of people with ideas."
Running on Tests
Though he regularly runs three miles at a time, UTC professor Eric Hungenberg wouldn't necessarily classify himself as an avid runner. In fact, when Bailey approached him about being one of the two subjects to run the Chattanooga Marathon, he felt more like "the most vulnerable Guinea pig."
As an expert in sports administration, Hungenberg knew his lack of running experience made him an ideal candidate for the study, and ultimately, his academic curiosity trumped his hesitancy. Much like Bailey, he wanted to see the wide range of emotions the EEG would record and compare the highs and lows to someone with more mileage than him. Plus, he would get to scratch "run a marathon" off his bucket list.
Hungenberg expressed some concerns before the race, but it wasn't until he stood at the starting line that his nerves - and the headset - really kicked in. As the professor silently stressed about the knee pain he had felt during training and the fact that he had never run more than 13 miles in his life, the device on his head measured his tumultuous brain activity and told the research team that his focus and anxiety was astronomical. "He was probably burning energy like crazy right there," Bailey says.
When the race started, Hungenberg took off, and his anxiety levels dipped while his focus stayed the same. Though he can't say for sure, Bailey believes the drop in anxiety was caused by Hungenberg being in the moment. He hypothesizes that focus was maintained to prevent stepping on other runners' feet, a guess substantiated by Hungenberg's drop in focus as the runners spread out.
Then, disaster struck at mile seven, when the pain in Hungenberg's knee flared up again. The EEG device recorded an immediate peak in focus and drop in excitement, but it was only the beginning of Hungenberg's sorrows. For the next three miles, the pain gradually worsened, along with his anxiety. He felt the entire city's eyes on him and was afraid the study would fail if he couldn't complete the race, Hungenberg said later. "You can actually see that in the data," Bailey says. "You can see his emotions turn from positive to negative."
But at mile 10, something changed. The data shows that Hungenberg's brain activity became more neutral and he settled back into a more positive mindset. Interestingly, this was exactly when Hungenberg saw his wife and daughter cheering him on from the sidelines. With strengthened resolve, he reached down and tightened his knee brace as much as he could, causing the pain to disappear from his joint and his data.
The rest of the race went without a hitch. At mile 14 and 15, the data shows a bump in positive emotions and excitement, which was right around the time Hungenberg says he started thinking "Wow, I've never run this far in my life." Both he and Bailey also noticed jumps in positive emotions when the race took Hungenberg through more aesthetically pleasing areas, like along the river and through the North Shore.
Around mile 20, the data shows a slight increase in negative emotions, which Bailey attributes to the uphill nature of M.L. King Boulevard and Hungenberg realizing he still had another hour left to go. There was another peak in excitement at mile 23, when Hungenberg realized he would complete the race, but his excitement didn't truly blast through the roof until he crossed the finish line.
While Hungenberg called his four-hour finish time "nothing to write home about," he hopes the data from his race will show other aspiring marathoners that the stress, anxiety and near-heartbreak they feel during training is not abnormal.
"Everybody goes through these highs and lows. It's a matter of just persevering through those negative emotional states because there will be peaks of excitement," he says.