Brainwaves around the clock: Fraunhofer video shows an EEG patch for everyday life
A flexible electrode patch on the face and a miniature amplifier behind the ear recorded brain activity for nearly 24 hours in a Fraunhofer IDMT study – during everyday tasks and at night in participants' own beds.
Photo: Chris Hope / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Video: YouTube · FraunhoferIDMT · youtube.com
An electroencephalogram (EEG) is usually recorded in a lab or clinic, with an electrode cap and cables. The Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Oldenburg wants to bring brainwave measurements into everyday life. In a study, ten people, including members of the research team, wore the flexible eight-channel electrode patch "trEEGrid" together with a miniature amplifier from Brain Products of Gilching for around 24 hours. The results appeared in the journal "Sensors" (DOI 10.3390/s26165309); the institute presented them with a video on 27 October.
During the day, participants completed short listening and visual tasks, did relaxation exercises and played Sudoku; at night, their sleep was recorded at home. According to the institute, the average contact impedance between skin and electrodes was below 140 kilohms on all eight channels on day one and below 100 kilohms on day two. The data made it possible to tell whether someone was solving an easy or a hard Sudoku.
"Our current sensor solution already captures EEG signals in basic everyday situations with high contact stability," says Insa Wolf, head of Mobile Neurotechnologies. The work is part of the ISES project, which is developing a sleep-monitoring system and is funded by Germany's federal research ministry. The demonstrators are for research use only, are not CE-certified medical devices and are not used for diagnoses.