The CES companies hoping your brain is the next big thing in computing

At every CES I’ve ever been to, there’s been a gadget or two promising to boost your mental health. In recent years, the number of companies entering this sector has increased and is likely to continue to do so in the future. Could it be that, just as the number of people wearing heart monitoring devices today is, everyone will have an EEG strapped to their skull in the next decade? This is more likely than you think, so it’s worth asking who these devices are good for, what benefits they can bring, and where the science ends and the hype begins.

Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a diagnostic tool to monitor the electrical activity of our brain. To put it very simply, our brain is constantly moving ions around, and when they reach the skull, it is possible to measure those ions. By placing electrodes on the scalp, you can record, more or less in real time, the changes in voltage emitted by our brain. These voltages are usually classified into ranges, often described as brain waves. Each one represents a different state of mind: Gamma (thinking hard), Beta (anxious or active), Alpha (relaxing), Theta (creative, or dreaming) and Delta (sleep).

Professor Carl Friston at University College London is one of the world’s most influential neuroscientists and an expert in brain imaging. He explained that these techniques can be used to diagnose problems in both the structure and function of the brain. And while there are many technologies that can observe how our brains work, “we are a long way from understanding the brain the way we understand the heart.” Broadly speaking, EEGs are a fairly simple tool for looking at how our brains work, but they have an advantage over more complex methods like fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), because they work in real time.

Consumer-use EEGs are nothing new — in 2011 I tested the Zeo Mobile, a small device you stick to your forehead and wear overnight. It monitored how well you slept and sounded an alarm when you were at the top of your sleep cycle, allowing you to wake up much easier. It worked well but it has a downside: it’s hard to sleep with a hard plastic puck stuck to your forehead.

EEG has recently been used as part of brain computer interfaces, or as a neurofeedback tool to help calibrate the quality of your attention. Interaxon, for example, makes the Muse headband that will monitor your brain waves, and tell you when you change positions. Last year, EEG startup Neural partnered with Master & Dynamic to launch the MW75S Neuro, a pair of high-end headphones designed to track your focus levels. When your attention span begins to wane, the system will alert you and advise you to rest in hopes of reducing fatigue.

At CES this year, Neuralable announced a partnership with HyperX, the gaming arm of HP, to produce an EEG headset with specific benefits for gamers. As gamers look for a way to improve their performance, the company has developed algorithms and training programs to help. You probably already know that living in a high-stress place is not good for your concentration and focus. As a result, Neurable research scientist Dr. Alicia Howell-Munson told me about a system that encourages you to reach a state of calm focus with marked improvements in reaction time and accuracy. It is a system that was initially designed in partnership with the Singapore Air Force to ensure that pilots remain in a state of calm focus.

I watched this demo myself, initially testing my skills in AimLabs (a tool that people use to test their reflexes), where my accuracy and reaction time were measured. Then, while wearing the Neurable’s headset, I had to practice focusing my attention on the galaxy of dots, the greater my focus, the slower and closer the dots would come. This was not an easy process, and it took me about five minutes to get to the point where I could push all the points to converge to one point on the screen. But, when I had, I took up Shooting Gallery again, and saw a dramatic jump in my performance. My accuracy increased from 91.3 to 99.1 percent, while my reaction time dropped from 623 ms to 532 ms.

Neuralable believes that its systems, which are designed to integrate with any manufacturer’s gear, have the potential to dramatically increase a person’s brain health and productivity. For example, by taking breaks when a person begins to get distracted, they are able to bounce back and work for longer periods of time than if they simply pushed harder. Similarly, the company can advise on your cognitive speed and brain age and guide you to make healthy choices. The company says it’s not just about well-being, for example, being able to identify loss of focus when truck drivers feel fatigued is important to help reduce auto accidents.

Co-founder Adam Molnar explained that the benefits of this technology compound over time, so the more practice a user has at finding a mental state of calm focus, the easier it will be to maintain it over the long term. CEO Ramses Alkaid said the company aims to enable people to see the often invisible symptoms of cognitive stress to make sure they are taking care of themselves. One thing that sets Neuralable apart from other companies is that it looks at details far finer than just its EEG data, he said.

There are a lot of companies at CES that are using EEG for more specific goals, like MyWaves. It uses EEG as part of its broader offering to use sound patterns to make it easier to fall asleep. It sells you an expensive forehead-worn EEG that you wear for a few nights a year. From there, the system produces a half-hour audio file that will reflect the patterns of your delta brainwaves. It claims that, if you listen to the track before going to bed, the experience of hearing your delta waves will help you fall asleep faster and experience more REM sleep.

And there are a number of companies manufacturing EEG wearables to monitor your mental health. For example, Brain-Life showed an early prototype of the Focus+, a headband EEG with a companion app that can respond to your cognitive load. It can also tell you how long you can maintain your attention and how well your brain rests and recovers. The company doesn’t have details on when the hardware will be available or how much it will cost, as it’s still early days.

There is widespread potential for using EEG as a brain computer interface, such as that worked by Brainlink. That company has combined EEG with an AR headset so people can interact with the world with their brains. For example, at a demonstration on the show floor at CES, I was able to turn a light on and off by “focusing” on it, though it’s hard to know how useful this would be in, for example, creating an assistive device for people with limited mobility. Like Brain-Life, it’s early days yet, and so there aren’t any products that we can talk about, but it’s clear that we’re going to see more startups entering this world.

As EEGs become more common, it’s possible that they will be packaged into smaller devices that will fit more seamlessly into our lives. One such example is NAOX, a French startup that has created a wearable, clinical-grade EEG in a pair of earbuds for the longitudinal testing needed to diagnose conditions like epilepsy. But the company also plans to incorporate the technology into a pair of true wireless earbuds. These headphones won’t arrive until late 2026, but Naox says the technology is small enough that it can be integrated with earbuds from other companies. As a result, it’s certainly plausible that we could see a lot of earbuds that will keep an eye on our brain health as an added buzz.

NAOX was co-founded by Dr Michel Le Van Quyen, who spoke about the rationale for creating in-ear ECGs at a talk in London in December 2025. Essentially, he was looking to build a brain equivalent of the Apple Watch’s continuous heart rate monitoring (and ECG). I was curious to learn about the science behind ear-mounted EEGs since they typically use the scalp. Professor Friston said ear-mounted EEG is potentially more useful because “you can get a little closer to the sources of activity.” And that adding consumer-grade EEG to wireless earbuds makes a lot of sense given their usefulness in practices like meditation.

One downside of the proliferation of wearable EEGs is that it may lead users to false conclusions about their mental health. For example, if someone is diagnosed with a condition such as epilepsy, they will undergo a 24-hour perambulatory EEG. As Professor Friston explained, that 24-hour EEG recording “will be carefully examined by experts who are able to run a differential diagnosis … to specify what further investigation is required.” He, like many physicians, is concerned about misinformed consumers using these devices to perform medical interventions without consulting a professional.

Friston said people shouldn’t expect wearable EEGs to be magic bullets for their brain health or cognition. He said the best way for a consumer to approach them is to treat them with the same respect as a household thermometer. “Are thermometers useful in managing my children’s health? Yes,” he explained, “Can your thermometer tell you which particular virus you have? Absolutely not.” “In the context of well-being and to enhance or validate practices like mindfulness and meditation, they can be fun and useful quantitative tools.” But, fundamentally, he thinks it’s all possible, especially now.