Recently I listened to a very interesting interview on Voices of VR, Muse Headband’s Real-Time Biofeedback for Immersive Meditation. I’m strongly considering getting this at some point, as I think it might help revitalize and extend my meditation practice – also I love neurofeedback, but haven’t had a chance to experience it for quite a while. Has anyone here been able to try this device? If so I’d love to hear about your experience with it.
From the VoVR interview description:
Muse is an immersive meditation device that provides real-time feedback on your mental activity, heart rate, breathing, and body movements. They’ve optimized the device for ease of use, and to assist in making the invisible and intangible process of meditation more transparent and tangible.
I talked with Interaxon co-founder Ariel Garten about her journey in creating the Muse headband, the changing perspectives on meditation over the past 17 years, what types of things that the Muse headband can detect, how researchers have been using Muse as a research tool, the ethical issues around biometric data, how VR experiences have been using Muse as a form of real-time biofeedback, and how they’re going to be releasing a special version of Muse later in 2019 that will work more directly with VR HMDs. [LINK]
Arthur, I don’t have the device - at least not yet. However, should you be a programmer, you might want to take note that they pulled back on public support for their APIs recently. You can still get the APIs, though, if you disable automatic redirection in your web browser at https://sites.google.com/a/interaxon.ca/muse-developer-site/muselab/tutorial .
(Instead I’ve been toying with the Neurosky Mindwave Mobile 2 on a Raspberry Pi via Bluetooth, coding in Python. Publicly available APIs and other code, e.g. https://github.com/robintibor/python-mindwave-mobile, is available. It only has one electrode, though. Muse has four.)
Yo, did you ever end up getting the headband? Also there are a lot of positive feedback loops for developing concentration with regard to jhana and the fire Kasina practice so that might be a cheaper alternative
I’m also very interested in this stuff, which works with the whole neurophenomenology principle, but have little experience with it. Holds lots of promise, IMO.
The new Muse S sounds even more promising – it’s designed to feel more comfortable and be worn while falling asleep – and has a protocol designed to help you get to sleep. I’m really hoping at some point they add functionality to measure your sleep stages overnight. It seems like this would be quite possible since the battery on the Muse S lasts for 10 hours.
