This month in our newsletter with @ndebock we cover the rise of Brainwave - EEG based startups. Electroencephalography, EEG, consists in recording the electrical activity of the brain (brainwave) thanks to electrodes placed on the head. Here’s a picture of a high end headset. 
The main advantage of this method to “extract” data from the brain is that it’s non invasive (it’s a headset that you wear / remove). This is why many Neurotech startups chose EEG. They create much simpler / basic headsets that people can use everyday.
The majority of these headsets are focused on very specific applications.They cannot compete with multipurpose/high end products, so they focalize on “narrow” use cases such as sleep monitoring, improving focus when studying, detecting when a driver is at risk of falling asleep..
Obviously we’re really early and the technology is not mature for mass market. The results promised by many of these startups are also “doubtful” ATM. That being said we think that it’s a promising trend because the hardware and software components are only getting better.
For the hardware it’s not far fetched to think that these dedicated headsets will disappear & that brainwave monitoring components will be integrated in your glasses & in ur headphones. A bit like fitness trackers which started as dedicated wristbands and are now in ⌚️or 💍.
The progress made in software (better algorithms & bigger datasets available) makes decoding brainwaves more accurate. We also think that the applications offered will go beyond healthcare to more consumer use cases (ex: analysing your brainwaves on Tinder or while using Spotify)
More 👉 medium.com/the-future-is-…
