Predictions for 2014

I find predictions interesting. Humans make predictions almost carelessly, and unabashed I too enjoy pondering the future. While I may have been conservative last year, here are my predictions for 2014 (and to hopefully be eventually correct, beyond).

“A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936

1. Consumer wearables become more accurate by being ingestible or implantable. Order yours online, FDA approved.
2. Ambiguous grade for gym class? Low class contribution/participation? Schools start to use wearables to grade previously ‘less quantifiable’ subjects and rubrics.
3. Emergence of classes on how to hide emotions and stress. Glass apps are being made to detect heat/sensory changes that may indicate lying, or body heat temperatures that indicate illness or nervousness.
4. Political leaders will wear smart glasses.
5. Medical technologies make great advances – not only more devices like the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System that restores some functional vision to the blind, but also for more cosmetic uses. Plastic surgery will become tech focused. Want a truly photographic memory? There will be an implantable brain chip for that.

Emotiv Insight: Track and Use Your Cognitive Strength

The Emotiv Insight is a multi-channel, wireless headset that monitors brain activity, tracking your brain’s fitness and performance in real time. While many fitness apps and devices focus on physical health, the Emotiv Insight focuses on cognitive health and wellbeing.

The Emotiv Insight can interpret basic commands such as push, pull, and rotate, as well as measure attention, focus, excitement and more. Just think (no pun intended), now you can command a helicopter to levitate, and the Emotiv Insight will interpret your mental command and raise the helicopter.

The Company exceeded its $100,000 Kickstarter goal by raising a record $1.6 million through over four thousand backers. I asked Emotiv Insight to tell us a little more about their product. Special thanks to Kim Du and the Emotiv Insight team.

What does the Emotiv Insight improve upon in the human mind and how long does it take to see results?

The brain is made up of approximately 100 billion nerve cells, which are called neurons. These active neurons cause electrical activity, which can be observed using non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG).

Emotiv Insight brainwear™ technology measures electrical activity from 5 regions of the brain. The location and distribution of particular kinds of activity are characteristic of specific functional activities or response patterns. For example, we measure the amount of activity in different frequency bands which have long been known to be characteristic of different kinds of functions – Beta and Gamma waves are very high frequency activities which indicate a high degree of intellectual processing, Alpha waves indicate a level of relaxed alertness, Theta waves indicate a dreamy state or paradoxically a high degree of memory recall and focus when occurring in conjunction with Beta and Gamma waves, and so on. The relative amounts of activity in these different bands across different functional locations provides a measure of the different states of the brain, including emotional states, functional processing and so on. Our system uses algorithms based on a combination of accepted measures (for example, frontal asymmetry is linked to feelings of attraction or repulsion, positive or negative feelings) and learned patterns based on data collected from volunteers in controlled experiments who are experiencing the specific emotional states we classify.

Who is your target audience for the Emotiv Insight?

Citizen Scientists, Quantified Selfers, and basically everyone interested in their own brain and improving their performance.

What should customers expect to do or change with the Emotiv Insight?

Emotiv Insight provides metrics for desirable and undesirable characteristics which are familiar to the users, and the recorded levels of these metrics during different sessions of similar activity can be used to reveal details about how the user can improve their performance or mental attitudes based on the differences between specific sessions. For example, does playing classical music allow you to focus more or less when you are studying? Do you study better late at night or early in the morning? With the feedback provided by Emotiv Insight detections you will be able to assess and improve your performance.

The Emotiv Insight brainwear™ can also understand and decipher basic mental commands. It can detect commands such as push, pull, levitate, rotate and even commands that are harder to visualize such as disappear. It also detects facial expressions such as blinks, winks, frown, surprise, clench and smile.

The Insight seems to be targeted for consumer use – will it also be sold to researchers? What other applications does the device have?

At launch, consumers can download a free mobile app (Android/iOS) that measures, tracks and helps them improve their Attention, Focus, Engagement, Interest, Excitement, Affinity, Relaxation and reduce Stress levels. You will get a much better idea of your productivity profile. When you’re paying attention, the time of day and how long you can pay attention for, your interest levels, your bursts of focus. How well you can relax, your stress levels.

The app will allow you to specify the kinds of activities you are undertaking and the surrounding context. After a brief calibration where you relax and provide the system with your background mental state, the application will collect information about your chosen activities and combine it with other contextual information. Your mental activities are monitored and the many different metrics are calculated and may be displayed in real time.

The data is uploaded to our cloud server where it can be analyzed further and compared with your other sessions, and also with those of your friends, the population norms for your own demographic group and the entire population, depending on the kinds of reports you wish to generate. This allows you to put your performance in context, strive to score better or improve faster than your social group, or simply improve your own performance against your own prior sessions. The level of interaction with your social group and the general population can be selected and changed at any time and your data is always kept private until you choose to share it.

Research has shown that when you are made aware of all of these indicators, people are better informed and empowered to make decisions to optimize and improve their cognitive fitness and performance.

Emotiv offers a platform to conduct research and/or develop applications for the EMOTIV INSIGHT. This includes the necessary drivers, a fully specified API for application development and analysis tools for EEG research applications.

Will the Emotiv Insight be partnering with other companies in terms of collaborating in gaming/software, white labeling or product compatibility?

Yes, We’ve already made announcements partnering with fellow Kickstarter projects for Wig Wag and Burnstar.  We’re looking forward to partnering with other companies to build out more integrations and apply Emotiv Insight in many uses.

When is the expected launch of the product? Will there be any changes to the product not described on the original Kickstarter campaign?

We’re looking forward to producing Insight to hit general release next April 2014.

Tradeshow: International Consumer Electronics Show (CES)

CES 2013 had a greatly expanded health and fitness related consumer device section of the tradeshow. I navigated my way through the massive exhibit floor along with over 150,000 other attendees from around the world. There will be a number of exciting devices of various price points aimed at physical and mental fitness coming to market this year and I will be sure to cover them in more detail as they are released. As for now, here are a few teaser photos from CES.

Get to Know: MoodHacker for Mood Management and Depression

ORCAS creates health care technology solutions that help people manage their own well-being. The company has multiple products (web apps, websites, and tablet apps) targeting goal setting, emotional well-being, back pain, repercussions from concussions and living with asthma, among others.

My focus today is a web app called MoodHacker. MoodHacker targets people with depression as a way to set goals and lift spirits – it can also be used as a diary to simply track the few things you accomplished today and how it made you feel. As the ORCAS website denotes, “MoodHacker is based in CBT and positive psychology, but the app is anything, but clinical. Exercise, sleep, nutrition, and mood are woven into a simple, social, engaging, and persuasive user experience.” You can get started here: MoodHacker.

 

 

 

Lumosity: Brain Games! (for Cognitive Enhancement)

Lumosity lets you pick which cognitive areas you want to improve on and then gives you specific games to play each day to work on those areas. When you sign up you get 3 free days of training. Each day’s session will have three to five exercises targeted to improve on the priorities you selected.

The games are developed by neuroscientists, and the site claims 25 million users. If you like what you see, you can get more days of training via a subscription based payment model. At the end of August, Lumosity raised $31.5 million in Series D funding, bringing total company funding to over $70 million to date.

I tried the Speed Match game, which was quite interesting. My only issue was that the flashcards used Chinese characters and I found myself trying to read the cards versus matching them…maybe they are testing me on multiple levels!