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Watching my brainwaves
Nov. 30th, 2009 06:16 pmAfter the Knot-Tying workshop at Noisebridge, I ended up chatting with a guy who is developing home EEG systems. He and some friends have used some open source hardware and software to create a system to do simple analysis of brainwaves. The system can distinguish activity levels in the different primary brainwave states as well as activity on the left and right sides of the brain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography#Comparison_table
I got hooked in and gave it a try.
The data is very messy, but a couple of interesting things came out of it:
- I have a high amount of coordination between the left and right hemispheres. This is more common in left-handed people, who tend to have less specialization of the hemispheres.
- I have constant delta waves when I'm awake. Delta waves are dominant during deep (stage 3 & 4) sleep, and most people don't have them when they are awake. However, when I did my sleep study, they found that I never reach stages 3 and 4 -- all my sleep is stage 1, 2, and REM. Or at least, it was all 1,2, and REM on the night they did the study. There's very little evidence to draw any connection, but it's conceivable that my body makes up for the lack of delta-wave sleep by running it "in the background" while I'm awake. I was also really tired when I did this.
- It's really hard to do specific tasks and analyze brainwave activity at the same time. Looking at the graphs involves a whole bunch of mental processing that, surprise surprise, shows up on the graph. It's a very complicated feedback loop. The cognitive load of looking at the real time brain data could be partially fixed by, for example, giving tactile feedback instead of visual feedback.
I'm going to meet up with him again in a couple of weeks and do some neurofeedback experiments.
----
Also, as for knot-tying,
- If your shoelaces untie frequently, you should use a square knot instead of a granny knot. I only learned this about four years ago.
- The trucker hitch is awesome. It's the best burningman packing knot ever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography#Comparison_table
I got hooked in and gave it a try.
The data is very messy, but a couple of interesting things came out of it:
- I have a high amount of coordination between the left and right hemispheres. This is more common in left-handed people, who tend to have less specialization of the hemispheres.
- I have constant delta waves when I'm awake. Delta waves are dominant during deep (stage 3 & 4) sleep, and most people don't have them when they are awake. However, when I did my sleep study, they found that I never reach stages 3 and 4 -- all my sleep is stage 1, 2, and REM. Or at least, it was all 1,2, and REM on the night they did the study. There's very little evidence to draw any connection, but it's conceivable that my body makes up for the lack of delta-wave sleep by running it "in the background" while I'm awake. I was also really tired when I did this.
- It's really hard to do specific tasks and analyze brainwave activity at the same time. Looking at the graphs involves a whole bunch of mental processing that, surprise surprise, shows up on the graph. It's a very complicated feedback loop. The cognitive load of looking at the real time brain data could be partially fixed by, for example, giving tactile feedback instead of visual feedback.
I'm going to meet up with him again in a couple of weeks and do some neurofeedback experiments.
----
Also, as for knot-tying,
- If your shoelaces untie frequently, you should use a square knot instead of a granny knot. I only learned this about four years ago.
- The trucker hitch is awesome. It's the best burningman packing knot ever.
