About EEG Data and Muse Biofeedback

This article covers everything about understanding how your Muse headband, the Muse app experience, and EEG data work together.

Looking for information about Muse and sleep data? Take a look at our article on Understanding Sleep Data.

What is Muse measuring?
Understanding my mind session results
Understanding how Muse works with EEG
How can I know if I’m in Alpha (or other specific brainwave states)?
How can I view and export my raw EEG data with Muse?
How can I conduct academic research with Muse?

 

What is Muse Measuring?

In a Muse Mind Biofeedback session, Muse senses your brainwaves (EEG) in order to measure your ability to place your focus on the breath, to keep it there, and gently reminds you to regain focus when your mind begins to wander.

At Muse, we’ve spent years doing intensive research on higher-order combinations of primary, secondary, and tertiary characteristics of raw EEG data and how they interact with focused attention training. Your brain is constantly generating electrical signals when you’re thinking, sleeping, or even relaxing. These signals can be detected by the Muse 7 EEG sensors.
 
The Muse app then uses advanced algorithms to assist users by providing:

• Real-time audio feedback during your session responds when your mind is wandering, informing you to come back to the session.

• Session data, translated from your EEG brainwaves, is presented in a way to help you reflect on your session.
  
   

Understanding my mind session results

Focused attention exercises are one of the cornerstones of a mindfulness practice, and a person’s practice is as personal and individual as a person’s brainwaves.

Your session data shows how your mind was behaving in the form of time spent in three areas:

• Active: This is time spent with a wandering mind. Your attention was fluctuating. Whenever you notice your active mind, bring your attention back to the breath.

• Neutral: This is your natural resting state. Your attention isn't fluctuating, but you aren't deeply focused either.

• Calm: A deep, restful focus on your breath. These are moments when you're truly concentrating on your breath. If you're calm for long enough, you'll hear the birds.
   

With your Calm score and mind session results, Muse uses a unique and complex combination of brainwaves to provide results designed to assist you in your session, along with your mental health and well-being.

For more information on your brainwave data, see our Brainwave Powerbands article.

If you have a premium subscription, you'll also see data for your cognitive performance. This data can help you identify trends in your cognitive performance over time, allowing you to make proactive lifestyle choices focused on your brain health. For more information, see our Cognitive Performance and Alpha Peak article.

Remember that there are no good or bad results. There’s no number to get to, such as 100% calm. Mindfulness is a journey, and over time, you can develop your practice with Muse and more consistently experience a calm state and see that reflected in your session data.
 

Understanding how Muse works with EEG

The data that Muse records is the electrical activity that comes from the synchronous activity of the brain. The raw EEG signal is composed of many different frequencies, all in different relative quantities.

The quantity of any specific frequency in the larger raw signal is called the "power" of that frequency. The raw EEG signal can then be broken down into its composite frequencies, and those can be grouped into larger bands of frequencies. These bands are referred to as power bands: Alpha, Beta, Theta, Gamma, and Delta.

It’s possible to graph the relative power of each frequency. We can know at a given moment how prevalent each frequency band is in the signal relative to all of the others.

A common misconception is that you can be "in" alpha or "in" beta. The brain isn’t in a singular state of a specific frequency band, though you can be experiencing a certain mental state that is generally associated with that band.
 
The EEG signal is very complex and many different analysis techniques have been used over the past few decades to draw inferences about a person's internal state based on it.

Higher or lower powers of different frequency bands have been associated with different mental and emotional states, but that doesn’t mean the associated state is present if you observe an increase or decrease in the power of these bands.

For example, brainwaves in the beta range have sometimes been associated with active thinking, but a rise in power in these brainwaves doesn’t necessarily mean that an individual is experiencing or engaged in active thinking. Likewise, an increase in the relative power of frequencies in the theta band does not necessarily mean that one is experiencing relaxation. It’s very difficult to look at some isolated power band data and draw any conclusions based on that alone.

 

How can I know if I’m in Alpha (or other specific brainwave states)?

You can view brainwave powerband data, such as Alpha, with your post-session results. For more information on your brainwave data, see our Brainwave Powerbands article.

Muse passively measures your brain’s natural electric field. Different cognitive states are associated with different patterns of brain activity, which are represented as patterns of electrical activity. When your mind is in a neutral state of rest, Muse will detect a certain pattern of electrical activity. When your mind wanders and becomes more active, Muse will pick up a different characteristic electrical pattern from your brain, which correlates with your changing state.

While the frequency bands play a role, absolute or relative band power is not the primary metric.

 

How can I view and export my raw EEG data with Muse?

The Muse app doesn’t provide the option to export raw EEG data.

For researchers, developers, and others who want to receive EEG data with their Muse, we invite you to apply for the Muse Software Development Kit (SDK)!

The Muse SDK gives you access to signals from the sensors on the Muse device (EEG, PPG, accelerometer, etc.), along with a few processed signals as identified in the SDK documentation.

Note that the SDK does not provide access to the more advanced processed signals used by the Muse app.
 

How can I conduct academic research with Muse?

If you would like to conduct academic research with Muse, please contact researchpartners@choosemuse.com