That Neuroscience Guy - The Neurotechnology Gift Guide

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

Are you curious about using neurotechnology to improve your brain health? Not sure where to start? In a special episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we kick off the holiday season by going over our opinions on popular neurotech, its scientific validity, and which devices can help you. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. With Christmas just around the corner, I thought I'd do a special episode and give you the buyer's guide to neurotechnology. Neurotechnology is an emerging field where people are taking neuroscience technologies and they're making them portable and usable. They're taking them out of the lab and into the real world. And they're marketing them to you. They're selling them. Companies are,

you know, telling you, buy this thing because it's going to help your brain. Buy this thing because it's going to help your brain. Use this tool to make your life better. So on today's podcast, a guide to neurotechnology. Now, I'll start with a small disclaimer here. There is an array of products out there, and I'm just going to touch on some of them, but I'm really going to focus on the methods as opposed to specific individual devices. So I'm going to tell you what these things are measuring and potential uses, and to be honest, the problems with them and the claims that are being made. The first one I'll start with is EEG. We've done an episode on EEG,

and I'm going to focus especially on mobile EEG. So taking something that measures your brain waves and making it portable. Now, the neurotechnology that's out there with EEG, it's focused on three main areas. Mindfulness, helping yourself become more mindful or in a meditative state. Sleep, monitoring your sleep patterns so that you potentially sleep better. And neurofeedback is another common use. But there's other things coming online every day. There's neurotechnology devices that say they'll help you focus. There's neurotechnology devices that say they'll help you pay better attention to the things you're doing so let's talk briefly about this so what is EEG I'm going to give you the one minute reminder because you can always go back to season one and listen to our episode on EEG but basically what

EEG is is it's the electrical activity of your brain. Now, when a neuron fires, it generates a small electrical potential called an action potential. And that action potential causes a release of neurotransmitter. That neurotransmitter crosses the gap between two adjacent neurons, and it binds to something called a dendrite. And when it binds, literally attaches, it's kind of like a jigsaw puzzle fitting together. It generates a small electrical charge called an EPSP, an excitatory postsynaptic potential. And basically, if you have enough neurons firing in the same region of the brain and they're all aligned the right way, those EPSPs summate, they add together, and you can see that electrical activity on the surface with some electrodes. So, why would you make a neurotechnology device

and what can you use it for? Well, the first thing I told you about was mindfulness. The Muse by Interaxon, for instance, is sold as a device that helps you with mindfulness. Now, how does it actually work and what's it actually doing? Well, when you put the Muse on, all right, it's going to measure the electrical activity of your brain. And I mentioned in a previous episode, my lab's done some cool validation work. And the Muse is a great piece of hardware. It's extremely well designed and it definitely measures brainwaves. But what about mindfulness and what's happening?

Now, we touched a little bit about this on our episode on meditation and mindfulness. But basically, what it's doing is it's measuring your brainwaves. we touched a little bit about this on our episode on meditation and mindfulness, but basically what it's doing is it's measuring your brainwaves. And the default assumption is that you're not being mindful when you start. So it's looking for a change in your brainwave pattern. And in case of the Muse, it gives you feedback. You literally hear stormy weather or you hear nice weather, and that's supposed to indicate whether you're being mindful or not. But you're basically pushing your brainwaves around. And if you think of the EEG episode, you might be trying to increase your alpha power. That's oscillations between 8 and 12 hertz. Now, you can do that. First of all, you can push your alpha power around and you can

learn to make the muse play the sounds that tell you you're being mindful. But the problem is, is this the truth? Is increasing your alpha power really of benefit? Does it truly mean that you're being mindful? And I'd have to say the scientific literature isn't conclusive. Now, there are people out there that believe that they have the answer, and this is what your brain looks like when you're being mindful. But if you look across all of the papers, you'll see there's a lot of variety in the results. Sometimes people show increases in alpha power during mindful state. Sometimes people show decreases in alpha power. So the problem with neurotechnology devices that focus on mindfulness is they all have a little algorithm that helps you decide if you're being mindful.

But are you really being mindful when you're in those brain states? And the answer is possibly. Now, the second use I said for neurotechnology is sleep. All right. There's devices out there that monitor your sleep. Now, there's things that do that through pulse oximetry. So oxygenation of the blood, but there's devices like the dream and the muse now that you wear while you're sleeping and they measure your brain waves. Now, this is actually a true thing and it's easy to do. If you had sleep apnea, for instance,

they'd take you to a sleep clinic and they would measure your brainwaves. And by doing that, you can quantify the stages of sleep. During sleep, you basically go through five stages. There is non-REM1, non-REM2, non-REM3, non-REM4, and then REM sleep. And you cycle through these stages throughout the night. And this is extremely accurate. This is the gold standard for measuring your sleep and looking at how you're sleeping. The hard part is that usually this is actually still done by hand or at least with hand oversight. Quantifying stages of sleep through algorithms is still something that's in development. Now, all of the companies in this space believe they've found the answer, but the question is, how accurate are they? And of course, the other problem with

neurotechnology that's focused on sleep is device movement. You know, you have to wear these things while you're sleeping. And I don't know about you guys, but when I sleep, I roll around and I, you know, these devices come off my head and the movement itself creates artifacts, which can spoof the algorithms. And it's a bit of a problem. So neurotechnology for sleep, it's a thing and it's there, but how well does it work? I think the jury is still out. The last one I mentioned with EEG is neurofeedback. So basically neurofeedback is exactly what it says. You measure the brainwaves of someone and then you give them a goal. We want you to increase your alpha power, like I mentioned for mindfulness. And it's the exact sort of same problem is the mindfulness

stuff. Because to be fair, most of the mindfulness apps are also using a form of neurofeedback. So yes, you can push your brainwaves around again. You can increase your alpha power. You can decrease your theta power or whatever frequency of brainwave you want. But what does it actually mean? Is there an actual benefit to increasing alpha power or decreasing theta power? And again, the jury is still out. Neurofeedback is an exceptionally interesting area because if you go through the scientific literature, honestly, about half of the papers say that neurofeedback is a real thing and it's of extreme benefit for you. But the other half think it's a placebo effect or a sham

and they're not as convinced. So I would still say that the research needs to be done. Now, I'm not saying neurofeedback doesn't work. I'm just saying that the scientific evidence behind it is still not conclusive. So increasing your alpha power may be beneficial for you. And I mentioned quickly, there's some other uses out there. For instance, there's devices out there that help you focus or they help you concentrate. And again, they're looking at relative changes in brainwave frequencies. But how sure are we of this? So for instance, there's a lot of evidence that suggests that frontal theta power in EEG is associated with engaging the prefrontal cortex, but the evidence is far from conclusive

and we don't really understand the mechanisms. So these devices are leveraging a couple of scientific papers that may suggest something, but they may work and they may not. It's still out. But they may work and they may not. It's still out. Now, with EEG, another problem that's out there, and I'll just finish with this, is individual variability. This is probably my whole knock on these kind of devices overall. And some of you might have heard me on other venues talking about this. You know, if I asked you what a good heart rate was,

you'd say 50 to 60 beats per minute. And if I asked you what a good heart rate was, you'd say 50 to 60 beats per minute. And if I asked you what a good blood pressure was, you'd say 120 over 80. But what's a good theta value? You know, I can't tell you, and I've been doing this for quite a while, what a good theta value is. Now, if we measured the brainwaves of everyone in the world, we'd get a feel for this. We'd know what the average theta values were and the average alpha values. But right now, most of the research is done in very small sample studies. So drawing these conclusions is really, really hard. Now again, I'm not saying that it's not true, but I'm just saying that the evidence isn't conclusive. It's a very different statement. Now that's a lot about

EEG. Another form of technology that's just coming on the market is FNIRS. It's functional near infrared spectroscopy. And we haven't really talked about FNIRS, but basically the way it works is when you're thinking, you know, when your brain is activated, there's changes in blood flow and there's specifically changes in the amount of oxy and deoxyhemoglobin. And this is what functional magnetic resonance imaging picks up. If you remember the episode on MRI and fMRI, that's literally what you detect with those devices. But researchers have found out and scientists have found out that if you fire an infrared beam into the head, and it sounds kind of cool, but that's literally what they're doing.

Originally they did it with lasers and now they're using infrared diodes. If you fire that beam into the head, it's reflected back to the surface and that reflection is basically dependent on the amount of deoxydeoxyhemoglobin. So the simple way of explaining this is the oxygen levels change in the blood as you're thinking and the brain is active and the FNIRS device can detect that. Now the devices in this field of neurotechnology that rely on FNIRS are typically over the frontal part of the brain and they're going for concentration or effort. So that's one key area. So they sit over top where they basically don't have to deal with hair, which is one of the reasons they're there. And they're supposed to help you focus and concentrate and things like that.

And another couple of devices that I've seen go over the motor part of the brain. So they go sort of across the top of your head and they're looking at changes in response to movements. And a lot of them are used in a diagnostic way. So they're basically tracking changes in the motor cortex as you recover from some traumatic event. Now, FNIRS is a cool technology. We have an FNIRS system in our lab, a big one, and then we've got some portable tech as well.

But the problem here is it's kind of the same problem, is that there's just a lack of research with conclusive results about FNIRS. And the technology itself isn't even finalized. People are still improving the actual tech and how it works. You know, EEG, to go back to it, the tech hasn't changed a lot in a long time. Like people are making small improvements in electrode quality, but the basic idea is the same. With FNIRs, I wouldn't say that's true. There's still a lot of debate as to what the correct way to do it, if you will. So another form of neurotechnology involving FNIRs. All right, what do you use it for? Put it over the front of the brain, look at concentration

and effort, put it over the motor strip and look at motor activity. But again, hard to interpret the results. That change in blood flow over the frontal cortex may be indicative of you concentrating too much or not enough, but it might also be unrelated. Now, I'll quickly go over a couple of things that are out there. Mobile eye tracking is a thing now. You can get devices that track your gaze and where you're looking. Google Glass played around with this a little bit, and there's other devices coming online all the time. And again, I'll emphasize that, yes, you can do this. There's no doubt that eye tracking works. It's pretty easy, in a sense, assuming you have the right equipment

to determine someone's gaze location or how often they're blinking or even the size of their pupils. You know, we published a paper recently looking at the size of the pupils and related that to different types of decision making. And this might be useful. For instance, in a marketing sense, it might be extremely valuable to know where someone is looking. Like, you know, what part of a running shoe do they focus on? You know, what part of a display are they really paying attention to? And in fact, there's a whole field called neuromarketing, but I won't go there today because I could give you a pretty long spiel about that as well. But as with all of these devices, I could give you a pretty long spiel about that as well. But as with all of these devices, what does it mean?

All right. So just because someone's looking at something, it's kind of hard to infer, you know, what's actually going on in the brain. The last round of neurotechnology isn't really neurotechnology itself, but it's inferring things about the brain. And that's heart rate variability. There's any number of devices that measure your heart rate. I'm wearing on my wrist right now, a Garmin Fenix 5. And you can do this, you know, you can measure heart rate. A lot of these devices aren't as accurate as putting electrodes over the chest. The gold standard is still electrodes on

the chest, which is why, to be fair, you know, the people that really get into tracking their heart rate do wear a chest strap. It's because you're going to get a far better measurement with electrodes on the chest than you are from something on the wrist or on your finger. And the thing that gets measured the most these days, like it used to just be heart rate. And, you know, when you run your heart rate increases and when you, when you, you know, you're walking, it's slower, but heart rate variability. Heart rate variability is basically the variability between the beats of the heart. So if you think of the heart, it's beating away,

boom, boom, boom, boom. And you can measure the time between those beats and you can look at how that time changes. And if it was low variability, the time between those beats would be very consistent. And if it was high variability, the time between those beats would be very consistent. And if it was high variability, the time would be considerably greater. Now, the reason I bring this up as a form of neurotechnology is that people have tied heart rate variability to stress and anxiety and any number of other cognitive issues.

But again, my answer has to be the same. Are we sure that's what really it really means? Now, I'm not a skeptic, but the simple truth is there's a lot more research that needs to be done. I myself have done research with the Muse, for instance, and think it's a fantastic device. Is it really measuring mindfulness or sleep accurately? I'm not sure. And that's true of all of these technologies that I've told you about today. So there you go. There are a lot of cool gadgets out there, but please take them as that, gadgets and not necessarily a device to fix your life. And there's your Christmas guide to neurotechnology.

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for listening. Sorry we we're late again it's a busy time of year with christmas and as a professor exams and grading and the rest of it my apologies thank you so much for listening and being patient i promise we'll drop an episode on sunday and keep that up i won't go to sleep sunday night till we have remember please follow me on twitter it helps a little bit and you'll find out about the cool science going on in my lab. It's That Neurosci Guy. We do have a fledgling YouTube channel, That Neuroscience Guy.

A lot of the videos up there are tied to my class and teaching, but we're going to add more content slowly, and especially during the off-season after Season 2 ends. And of course, if you've got some episode ideas, That Neuroscience Guyatgmail.com. In fact, we got a really cool one came in the other day. Thank you so much, Rebecca. Big shout out to you. We'll do an episode on seizures and we're going to look at some of the other things that are coming, you know, some of the other suggestions that were getting sent to us.

So please email us thatneuroscienceguyatgmail.com. And we try to get back to everybody, but we'll also take these as episode ideas because really the point of the podcast is the neuroscience of everyday life. And I want to know what you're interested in, what you want to know more about. All right, everyone. Thanks for listening again.

My name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm that neuroscience guy. Have a great week.