Quick Summary
Samsung has created a prototype earbud that monitors brain activity, and which could have educational and mental health applications.
We're a way off a commercial product, but the implications could be important.
If you thought earbuds that checked your heart rate were impressive, Samsung has something even more interesting in development. It is working on earbuds that can read your mind. Well, sort of.
Samsung has developed a prototype it calls the Ear-EEG, and it's an bud-sized device that fits around your ear and packs a miniature electroencephalogram. An EEG measures the electrical activity in your brain and in this device, that activity is then passed via a brain-computer interface to the appropriate apps.
If you're thinking "I bet this is going to be used for advertising", you might be right.
One of the applications described by Samsung is "to inform decisions related to marketing or entertainment". But the company is also interested in potential healthcare applications – this may include "mental health management and productivity".
Samsung has successfully created smartwatch monitoring for signs of LVSD, which is responsible for almost half of all heart failure cases
Why does Samsung want to look at your brain?
The Ear-EEG system has been developed in partnership with Hanyang University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, and it's designed to deliver EEG monitoring in the real world instead of in the lab or inside a medical centre.
One of its applications is drowsiness detection, which Samsung says could be used to enhance learning efficiency "in education and beyond".
The other quoted application is for the aforementioned advertising. Samsung says that by applying an AI model to brainwave readings, the Ear-EEG "identified participants' personal video preferences with 92.86% accuracy". This it claims, points to potential applications in "neuromarketing and entertainment".
This is far from being a shippable product – it's still pretty bulky – but it's part of a wide and huge investment into wearable tech.
Samsung has also announced a successful implementation of AI-based smartwatch monitoring to provide early detection of LVSD (Left Ventricular Systolic Dysfunction), which is responsible for almost half of all heart failure cases and is more fatal than some cancers.
That might be of even more use in the long run.
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