Elemend, a five-year-old startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, today unveiled the company's first product, a neuromodulation wearable ($349). According to co-founder and CEO Meredith Perry, the technology uses electroencephalography (EEG) sensors to detect electrical activity in the brain and then influence these oscillations using bursts of sound transmitted through bone conduction to oscillate the brain waves. Track it.
Elemend's first application for this wearable aims to induce sleep by suppressing alpha waves. There are other wearables on the market that monitor brain waves and encourage users to actively modify their alpha patterns through biofeedback. Elemind's headband appears to be the first device to use sound to directly influence a passive user's brain waves.
In clinical trials, Perry says, [no relation to author], 76% of subjects fell asleep faster. Those who noticed a difference saw an average of 48% less time between waking and falling asleep. The results were similar to those of comparable trials of pharmaceutical sleep aids, Perry said.
Perry said: “It eliminates my ruminations and quiets my thoughts. “It’s like noise canceling for the brain.”
I briefly tested Elemind’s headband last May. It was comfortable, with a thick cushioned band across the forehead connected by elastic loops to keep it in place. The band contains multiple EEG electrodes, a processor, a three-axis accelerometer, a rechargeable lithium polymer battery, and custom electronics that collect the brain's electrical signals, estimate their phase, and generate pink noise through a bone conduction speaker. The whole thing weighs about 60g, about the size of a small kiwi fruit.
My test conditions were not optimal for sleep: early afternoon, fairly bright conference room, bean bag chair as bed, and ventilator blowing. And my test lasted just 4 minutes. I would say that a little popping of pink noise (white noise with no higher frequencies) isn't unpleasant. And since I often wear an eye patch, the feeling of the cloth touching my face was not uncomfortable. It wasn't the time or place to try to get a good night's sleep, but after two minutes, I and everyone else in the room noticed that I was yawning like crazy.
How Elmind Modulates Brainwaves
What was going on in my brain? Simply put, different brain states are associated with different wave frequencies. A person with their eyes closed and relaxed but not asleep produces alpha waves of about 10 hertz. When you fall asleep, alpha waves are replaced by theta waves at about 5 Hz. After all, delta waves in deep sleep occur at about 1 Hz.
Ryan Neely, Vice President of Science and Research at Elemind, explains: “As soon as you put the headband on, the EEG system starts working. It uses simple signal processing with bandpass filtering to isolate activity in the 8-12 Hz frequency range (alpha band).”
Neely continues: “Our algorithm then examines the filtered signal to identify the phase of each oscillation and determine when to generate a pink noise burst.”
To help users fall asleep faster [top], bursts of pink noise are timed to produce and suppress brain responses that are out of phase with alpha waves. to improve deep sleep [bottom]Pink noise is timed to produce brain responses that are in phase with delta waves.Source: Elemind
He explains that these auditory stimuli cause ripples in waves coming from the brain. Elemind's system attempts to match these ripples to specific phases of the wave. Because there is a difference between the stimulus and the evoked response, Elemind tested the system on 21 people and calculated the average delay to take this into account when deciding when to trigger a sound.
To induce sleep, Elemind's headband targets the low end of alpha waves, the point where the brain is most excited, Neely says.
“Alpha rhythm can be thought of as a gateway for communication between different areas of the brain,” he says. “By disrupting that communication, or coordination, between different brain regions, you can disrupt patterns like rumination that can keep you from sleeping.”
When these alpha waves are suppressed, they are followed by slower oscillations, like the theta waves of light sleep, Neely says.
Elemind has no intention of stopping here. The company plans to add an algorithm that deals with delta waves, a low frequency of 0.5 to 2 Hz that is characteristic of deep sleep. Here, Elemend's technology will attempt to amplify this pattern with the intention of improving sleep quality.
Is this safe? Yes, says Neely, because auditory stimulation is self-limiting. “brain waves have a natural space they can occupy, and this stimulation shifted brain activity within that natural space, unlike deep brain stimulation, which can shift brain activity outside of its natural parameters,” he explains.
Beyond sleep, calming, memory, and mental health
Applications may eventually evolve beyond inducing and enhancing sleep. Researchers at the University of Washington and McGill University have completed a clinical study to determine whether Elemind's technology can be used to increase pain thresholds in patients receiving sedation. Results are being prepared for peer review.
Elemend is also working with a team that includes researchers from McGill and the Leuven Brain Institute to determine whether the technology can enhance memory consolidation in deep sleep and to what extent it may be useful for people with mild cognitive impairment and other memory disorders.
Neely hopes more applications will be investigated in the future.
“Reverse alpha stimulation [enhancing instead of suppressing the signal] “It can increase arousal,” he said. “That's something I'd like to look into, and it would be interesting to look into mental health treatments, because topological coupling between different brain regions appears to be an important factor in depression and anxiety disorders. because of.”
Perry, who previously founded wireless power startup UBeam, co-founded Elemind with four university professors with expertise in neuroscience, optogenetics, biomedical engineering, and artificial intelligence. The company has raised $12 million in funding to date and currently has 13 employees.
Pre-orders begin today for $349 for the beta product, and Elemind expects general sales to begin later this year. The company will offer customers an optional membership for $7 to $13 per month that will allow them to store their sleep data in the cloud and access new apps as they are released.
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