Muse HeadbandAn exploration

Gary Monk27th October 2015

Introduction• Muse is a brain sensing headband

• It assists mindfulness/meditation by helping to calm the mind

• Muse measures brain signals to understand your level of ‘calm’

• A companion app helps to understand your progress and provides insights

ObjectiveMuse senses the brain signals and measures the relative degree of calm. It simultaneously provides biofeedback, via headphones and a sound track that varies between a soft breeze and a violent storm depending on calm levels. This prompts the user to focus on calming their thoughts

N=1 (personal) study to understand if using the biofeedback element of Muse during meditation actually increased calm levels

MethodIn all instances Muse was worn to measure calm during meditation sessions.

In the first set of measurements (No Muse) the biofeedback was switched off – simply by not wearing headphones.

In the second series of measurements (With Muse) the biofeedback was enabled

Sessions were 12 minutes long

Method (cont.)To account for other factors such as baseline level of calm, variation due to events, time of day etc 2 experiments were devised

In the first experiment the Muse biofeedback was employed before and a session directly after was performed that did not employ biofeedback.

In the second experiment the Muse was employed without biofeedback first and a second session directly after was performed that did employ biofeedback.

Series12 0 .00

3 7 .50

5 5 .00

7 2 .50

9 0 .00

No MUSE With MUSE

% Calm

80%

60%

78%

70%67%

75% 76%

40%

66%

67%

53%49%

57%

64%47%

66%

Muse biofeedback before

Series12 0 .00

3 7 .50

5 5 .00

7 2 .50

9 0 .00

No MUSE With MUSE

% Calm

84%

54%

52%

70%

63%

63%

87%

57%

68%

40%

46%

79%

60%

40%

53%

38%

Muse biofeedback after

Results• Both streams demonstrate Muse with

biofeedback switched on had the best results in increasing calm levels

• Muse biofeedback before generated 69% calm versus 58% with biofeedback switched off

• Muse biofeedback after generated 68% calm versus 46% with biofeedback switched off

Conclusion• Muse biofeedback produces a deeper level of

calm

• Biofeedback after produced a bigger difference – possibly as the mind had not already been calmed by the biofeedback

• A personal observation, was the use of Muse developed meditation into a habit and increased meditation time per day

Thank youTwitter: @garymonkBlog: garymonk.com

Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/garywmonk/