By Ryan Neely, Ph.D.
Over the past few months, we have had the fortune of interacting with many of our beta customers through our live webinar series. They have participated with insightful questions, given great feedback, and helped us to see the product from different angles - all of which will help us to improve the experience in the months to come. Across many of the webinars, we noticed that many of the same questions arose, so we thought it could be helpful to record these questions and our answers in a blog post for future reference. As always, feel free to reach out to support@elemindtech.com if you need any additional clarification.
How does the Elemind headband actually work?
This is a great question and certainly an important one. To provide a full answer, there are a couple key points to understand:
- The brain generates oscillating patterns of activity, or “brainwaves,” that cycle up and down at different frequencies - ranging from less than 1 per second to over 100 per second.
- Different metal states are associated with changes in the strength of brainwaves at different frequencies.
- Alpha frequencies, which range from about 8 to 12 cycles per second, tend to be strong when you are lying awake with your eyes closed, but dissipate in favor of slower frequencies when you fall asleep. The strength of alpha more generally has been shown to correlate negatively with sleep depth (1).
- Auditory stimuli, like the sound pulses generated by the headband, create small perturbations of brain activity on their own - “ripples,” if you want to stick with the water analogy.
The headband is designed to disrupt these alpha oscillations while you are awake, with the goal of accelerating sleep onset. To do this, the headband measures the alpha oscillation in real time, and issues sound pulses at particular phases of the alpha oscillation. The phase-dependent pulsing is the key feature: by consistently generating “ripples” that arrive anti-phase with the alpha wave, the sound pulses can maximally disrupt the power of alpha.
Elemind helps me fall asleep at the beginning of the night, but I keep waking up. Is there a solution for this?
This is a common refrain for many of our users - the technical term for this kind of complaint is “sleep maintenance” difficulties, compared to issues with “sleep onset.” Right now, the Elemind band can help you fall back to sleep when you wake up in the middle of the night - simply press the action button once to restart stimulation. One follow-up question that we often receive is whether we can restart stimulation automatically when we detect someone is waking up. This is certainly within the capabilities of the device, and something we plan to implement in the future. However, we also want to be careful to ensure that we implement this feature correctly. The last thing we would want to do would be to wake someone up by turning on the stimulation at the wrong time.
Questions about the sounds generated by the Elemind band
We tend to get a lot of questions about the sound stimulation - that makes sense given that it’s the primary mechanism by which the device influences brain activity. Here are some of the most common:
- How loud should it be? The rule of thumb is that if you can hear the sound pulses, then they are influencing your brain activity. So make it just loud enough to hear - there’s no benefit from making it any louder.
- I can’t hear the rain sounds in the background. The headband generates two types of sound: pink noise pulses and a continuous rain sound. The pink noise is the loudest of the two, and this is on purpose: the pulses are timed to the phase of your alpha oscillation and are the main component of the stimulation. The rain sounds are added to make the soundscape more soothing, but are a passive background sound. If you can’t hear them that’s OK - the headband will still be doing its job.
- I have hearing loss or tinnitus - will that be a problem? The headband works by delivering auditory stimulation, so if you are unable to hear the sounds it won’t be able to work as intended. For any specific questions, we recommend discussing with your healthcare provider.
- Why does it sound like that? We chose to use white noise pulses because they are a broad-spectrum sound that is particularly effective at activating a wide range of auditory receptors in the ear.
How should I wear the band? Does the position on my forehead matter?
You can wear the headband anywhere on your forehead that’s comfortable for you, as long as it’s not impeded by hair. The headband should be snug, but definitely not too tight - you don’t want it to be uncomfortable. To deal with different types of sleep positions or shifting of the headband during the night, the band has built-in redundancy when it comes to the EEG sensors. There are 3 primary sensors in the front of the band, and 2 reference sensors (the rubber elements that sit above your ears). To function properly, the band only needs contact at one of the reference sensors, and one of the primary sensors. One of the more common issues that new users have is overlooking the reference sensors - so if you have trouble getting a green icon in your app, make sure these sensors are touching the skin above your ears.
We’ve had too many great questions and comments during the webinar series to reproduce in one blog - so check out our YouTube channel if you want to dig into some of the past recordings. Looking forward to the next one!
References
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McKinney, S.M., Dang-Vu, T.T., Buxton, O.M., Solet, J.M. and Ellenbogen, J.M., 2011. Covert waking brain activity reveals instantaneous sleep depth. PloS one, 6(3), p.e17351.