Wearables That Wake You

Rikky Muller, Ph.D. ’13, said her first thought upon buying a pair of Apple AirPods in 2017 was, “What an amazing platform for neural recording.” Needless to say, Muller, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley, is not your ordinary tech consumer. Indeed, her stated goal is to “enable the seamless connection of mind to device in a variety of user interface, consumer, and health care applications.” Muller’s AirPods epiphany led her and her team to develop earbuds that can successfully detect brain waves while still being scalable to produce. The current prototypes are able to detect alpha waves that our brains emit as we begin to nod off, suggesting that the devices could be used to wake drowsy drivers or to diagnose and monitor sleep disorders. “Wireless earbuds are something we already wear all the time,” Muller told Berkeley News. “That’s what makes Ear EEG such a compelling approach to wearables. It doesn’t require anything extra.”