Neural Earbuds - Mobile Neurotechnology Trends

The past two years have been an exciting time for the Neurotech industry in both invasive and non-invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) products. I’ve been fortunate to be involved in the development of in-ear EEG Earbuds as a product and application lead at IDUN Technologies and in the Neurotech TechTree team at the Foresight Institute alongside working with NeuroTechX as one of the Zurich chapter leads.

In December 2022 I attended the Foresight Vision Weekend in San Francisco and then had the opportunity to attend the Augmenting Brains event in Boston organized by the MIT Media Lab. In Jan. 2023 I attended CES in Las Vegas and helped kick-off the NeuroTechX Buzz in Review live-stream series where we covered exciting developments in 2022 for brain-computer interfaces and neurotechnology.

Neurotechnology Product Development

It’s an exciting time to be involved in neurotechnology product development. We’re still in the pre-iPhone phase of the industry where no break-out product has yet dramatically impacted the world, but many BCI products are providing value in the market and will increase as BCI are used in consumer and medical applications such as better sleep, focus management as well as medical diagnostics (dementia, Alzheimer’s) and treatments (disorders, depression).

I’m biased when I say that neural earbuds (brain-computer interface hearables) will likely be the form-factor that makes BCIs truly wearable and usable in society. I’m biased because I’ve been developing in-ear EEG Earbuds at IDUN Technologies for the past 3 years. Our team started from the material and ear tip sensor level and have been building a full-stack solution including our Guardian Neural Earbuds and Neuro-Cloud platform to bring neurotechnology to the consumer market.

Society and Acceptable Neruotech

As a society we’re highly selective about what types of technology we accept for ourselves and for those around us to wear. Over the centuries we’ve adopted eye glasses, watches, headphones, earbuds and certain types of clothing, and to what extent media and data capturing is “allowed” legally and from the local community “accepted”.

Steve Mann with his AR eyeware and Google Glass are some of the best examples in recent memory where their choices were rejected by people in public. Sarah Slocum was assaulted in San Francisco because of her choice to wear her Google Glass while Steve was assaulted as well at McDonald’s in Paris while wearing his AR eyeware. I haven’t heard of anyone being assaulted for wearing a BCI in public, but I’ve also never seen a BCI that anyone would want to wear on a street. If I saw someone in an EEG cap I’d assume they’re running a mobile neuroscience experiment. If I see someone with earbuds in, I assume they’re listening to music or talking to someone other than themselves.

Neural Earbuds

Neural Earbuds or Brain Buds, it’s unclear what we’ll call them but they are coming on the market and represent the best way to seamlessly integrate neurotechnology and neuroscience into consumer products. LG Electronics announced their Breeze Sleep Neurobuds at CES 2023, showing the potential to measure and improve sleep using music and knowledge of where a person is in their sleep cycle.

Neural Earbuds measure electrical brain activity from inside or around the ear canal. This is one of the best locations to capture a mobile brain signals because the ear is well-stabilized and near the center of gravity of your head. Capturing electrical signals from brain activity requires a stable electrode placement against the skin. Traditional BCI systems have electrodes around the scalp to do this and they can suffer from motion artifacts due to scalp, muscle, eye and electrodes shifting. This makes it very difficult to build a BCI that people will wear outside of a lab, clinic or bedroom. With earbuds, we can just integrate the necessary materials and electrodes into existing earbud designs (well, it it's slightly more complex in reality).

Neuro Earbud Industry

Now, of course it’s not quite that easy. A ton of research into materials, industrial design, signal processing, cloud application development, etc. are required. However, the components are there and many companies and research groups are making progress towards bringing Neural Earbuds from the lab to the market. LG Electronics (Breeze), Nextsense, EMOTIV, NaoX Technologies, Wisear, AAVAA, T&W Engineering A/S, IDUN Technologies (Guardian Earbuds), etc. are all developing the necessary technologies and bringing ear-EEG products to the market for different use-cases and applications.

Neural Apps

Apps and devices always come along with one another. The ecosystem is needed for growth and adaptation. The rise of Neuro Earbuds has the potential to bring the market scale necessary to trigger the rise of Neural Apps and app stores to integrate neurotechnology seamlessly into our lives.