Your brain with headphones is a bustling place — it’s filled with ripples and waves of thoughts, ideas and worries throughout the day. But it also craves stillness, a chance to recharge and recover come nighttime. That’s why, when the sound of a steady drip-drip-drip interrupts your rest, it can throw off your ability to get the most out of your sleep.
Enhancing Meditation with Brainwave Headphones
Fortunately, a startup called Melomind thinks it can help. Its $250 headphones pair with an app that uses sensors in the ear cups to track your brainwaves and send feedback, which you can then use to train yourself to calm your mind. The company isn’t the first to harness a technology known as electroencephalography, or EEG, but it does have more experience than some of its competitors.
The headsets work by sending small electrical signals to the brain via electrodes attached to your scalp. The resulting data, which can be displayed in real-time, is analyzed by the app to determine when you’re at your most focused. When you start to lose concentration, the headset will let you know and may give you a cue to take a break or swap the song in your playlist for something more conducive to mental focus.
While the concept behind these headsets sounds promising, some concerns should be considered. For one, prolonged and excessive use of headphones can damage the hair cells in your inner ear, leading to hearing loss over time. It can also raise the risk of tinnitus, and in some cases, listening to certain types of music or audio content can be damaging to your cognitive functions.