This isn't cool. The idea that you can 'measure' attention using a Neurosky device is fairly close to being an outright lie. To measure EEG from someone riding a bike in a controlled environment isn't an easy task. To claim that you can measure EEG using a Neurosky device as someone cycles a bike around NYC is simply lying.
This is EEG / BCI clickbait and it doesn't do people working in the field any good at all.
Came here to express something like this. Some neuroscientists I talked to recently for an article I wrote who specialize in brain-computer interfaces and neural decoding told me the mass market EEG headsets are basically trash. I don't trust any work done with them as the primary source, this project included.
I'm a neuroscientist with a decade in fMRI and that criticism is unwarranted. Scalp based EEG is inherently noisy but if hundreds toward thousands of people are using these, there's a real chance the signal could overwhelm the noise.
What's the alternative? A bunch of lab-based studies? Those have their own severe problems. Research isn't zero sum. Every little bit counts.
In order for an EEG signal to overcome noise it is typically time locked to an event and recorded multiple times. The signal is then averaged time locked to the stimuli. How is this done cycling around NYC? Do you politely ask a driver to swerve into your path 5 or 6 more times in order to get a proper sample of the event?
If you have experience in fMRI consider that this EEG is going to look like continual gradient and line noise artefacts, potentially highly correlated to the type of road surface the bike is currently on. Please explain how this can be 'averaged out' in order to obtain a signal.
I'm also work in (applied) cognitive neuroscience and disagree with respect to the utility of these studies (ie "every little bit counts"). Pop-neuroscience articles that make large claims have the potential to poison the well in terms of the public's interest in, and the reputation of, neuroscience. Too much hype in a field has the potential to create a backlash, as in the "AI Winter" of the 1980s.
I've watched fMRI (the God region of the brain!) studies poison the well. Pop-science is an endless, multimedia beast. Research that replicates is truth winning out. Everything else, including many high profile journal articles, is just noise.
Nice article - I saw Gallant present his labs research in London. It's incredibly cool and is actually real.
As far as I know the heavy hitters in the European BCI community stated that they found no reasonable evidence that mass market EEG headsets worked. Depending on the specialism some labs still publish research using them.
Those are very strong statements without any evidence cited. Yes, bike riding is hard, but a bunch of clinical research studies aren't uniquely special or more accurate, not even with more frequent measurements or studier electrode to scalp adhesives.
Electrical activity from the muscles (EMG) is of larger magnitude than activity from the brain (EEG) and tends to saturate EEG recordings during vigorous movement unless a signal processing technique (such as blind source separation) is used to distinguish the two sources.
Clinical EEG research studies are far more accurate. I don't citations to claim that a single channel dry electrode Neurosky device doesn't compare to a high density Guger Technologies, Biosemi or a Brain Products amplifier.
Of course the quality of the electrode to scalp contact makes a difference, you can't get dry electrode systems on the cheap. If you could it wouldn't be an active area of research and funding.
This is EEG / BCI clickbait and it doesn't do people working in the field any good at all.