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

At every CES I’ve been to, there’s been one or two gadgets that promise to improve your mental health. In recent years, the number of companies making money in this space has grown, and is likely to continue to do so in the future. Could it be that, like the number of people wearing heart monitoring wearables today, everyone will be strapping an EEG to their skull a decade or more down the line? It’s more possible than you think, so it’s worth asking what these devices are good for, what benefits they can bring, and where science and guesswork ends first.

An Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a clinical tool for monitoring the electrical activity of our brain. Simply put, our minds are constantly moving ions, and when they reach the skin, it is possible to measure those ions. By placing electrodes on the scalp, you can record changes in the voltage that our brain is pushing more or less in real time. These voltages are often divided into phases, often described as brain waves. Each represents a different state of mind: Gamma (thinking hard), Beta (anxious or active), Alpha (free), Theta (creative, or dreaming) and Delta (sleeping).

Professor Karl Friston at University College London is one of the world’s most influential neuroscientists and an expert in brain imaging. He explained that this technology can be used to diagnose problems in the structure and function of the brain. And although there is a lot of technology that can look at how our brain works, “we are a long way from understanding the brain like we understand the heart.” Generally speaking, EEGs are a simple tool to observe how our minds work, but they have one advantage over more complex methods such as fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), as they work in real time.

Consumer EEGs are nothing new – in 2011 I tested the Zeo Mobile, a small device that you attached to your forehead and wore all night. It monitors how well you sleep and sounds an alarm when you’re at the top of your sleep cycle, so you can wake up easily. It worked well but on one side: It’s hard to sleep with hard plastic stuck to your forehead.

EEGs are being used more recently as part of brain computer interfaces, or with neurofeedback tools to help you measure the quality of your meditation. InteraXon, for example, makes Muse headbands that will monitor your brain waves, telling you when you switch states. Last year, EEG startup Neurable teamed up with Master & Dynamic to launch the MW75S Neuro, a pair of high-end headphones designed to track your concentration levels. If your attention span begins to wane, the system will alert you, advising you to rest in hopes of reducing burnout.

At CES this year, Neurable announced a partnership with HP’s gaming arm HyperX to produce EEG headsets with specific benefits for gamers. Since players are looking for any way to improve their performance, the company has developed algorithms and training programs to help. You may already know that being in a high stress environment is not good for your concentration and focus. Therefore, Neurable research scientist Dr. Alicia Howell-Munson walked me through a program that encourages you to reach a state of calm focus with noticeable improvements in response time and accuracy. It is a system that was originally designed in collaboration with the Singapore Air Force to help ensure that pilots remain in a state of calm concentration.

I sat through this demo myself, first testing my skills on Aimlabs (a tool people use to test mental acuity) where my accuracy and reaction times were measured. Then, while wearing the Neurable headset, I had to practice focusing my attention on a galaxy of dots, the more I focused, the slower and closer the dots moved. That was not an easy process, and it took me about five minutes to get to the point where I could push all the dots to converge into one point on the screen. But, when I was done, I took up the shooting gallery again, and I noticed an amazing increase in my performance. My accuracy increased from 91.3 percent to 99.1 percent, while my response time dropped from 623ms to 532ms.

Neurable believes that its systems, designed to integrate with any manufacturer’s gear, have the potential to significantly increase human brain health and productivity. For example, by taking a break when one’s concentration starts to wane, they are able to step back and work longer than if they were just pushing hard. Similarly, the company can advise you on your cognitive speed and brain age and guide you in making healthy decisions. The company says that this is not only about well-being, and, as you can see the loss of concentration is important, for example, to help reduce traffic accidents when truck drivers feel tired.

Co-founder Adam Molnar explained that the benefits of this combination of technologies are long-term, so the more practice a user has in finding that calm, focused state of mind, the easier it will be to maintain it for a long time. CEO Ramses Alcaide added the company’s mission is to enable people to visualize the often invisible symptoms of mental stress to ensure they take care of themselves. He added that one thing that sets Neurable apart from other companies is that it looks for finer grain details in its EEG data.

There are many companies at CES that use EEGs for specific purposes, such as MyWaves. It uses EEG as part of its broader offering to use sound patterns to facilitate sleep. It sells you an expensive forehead EEG that you wear a few nights during the year. From there, the system generates a half-hour audio file that will match the pattern of your delta brainwaves. Say, if you listen to a track before going to sleep, the sensation of hearing your delta waves will help you fall asleep faster and experience more REM sleep.

And there are plenty of companies making EEGs for you to wear to keep an eye on your mental health. Brain-Life, for example, showed off an early prototype of Focus+, a headband EEG with an accompanying app that can provide feedback on your cognitive load. It can also tell you how long you can sustain your attention and how much your mind relaxes and recovers. The company had no details on when the hardware would be available or how much it would cost, as it is still early days.

There is great potential in using EEG as a brain-computer interface, such as that used by Braineulink. That company has combined EEG with an AR headset so people can interact with the world through their brains. For example, in a demonstration on the show floor at CES, I was able to turn a light on and off by “focusing” on it, although it’s hard to know how useful that would be, for example, in creating an assistive device for people with limited mobility. Like Brain-Life, it’s early days, so there’s no product to point to, but it’s clear that we’ll see other startups looking to enter this world.

As EEGs become commonplace, it is likely that they will be packaged into small devices that easily fit into our lives. One such example is NAOX, a French startup that has developed wearable, clinical-grade EEG into earbuds for the type of longitudinal testing needed to diagnose conditions such as epilepsy. But the company also plans to include the technology in true wireless earbuds. These headphones won’t arrive until late 2026, but Naox says the technology is small enough to be integrated with other earbud companies. Therefore, it is quite interesting that we can see a lot of earbuds that will always look at our brain health as a side hustle.

NAOX was co-founded by Dr. Michel Le Van Quyen who, in a speech in London in December 2025, spoke about the reason for creating the ECG in the ear. Basically, he was looking to build the brain equivalent of a heart monitor (and ECG) for the Apple Watch. I was curious about the science behind ear implanted EEG as they usually use the scalp. Professor Friston said in-ear EEG could be very useful as “you can get a little closer to the sources of activity.” And it makes a lot of sense for consumer-grade EEG to be added to wireless earbuds given their use in practices like meditation.

Another downside to the proliferation of wearable EEGs is that they can lead users to draw incorrect conclusions about their mental health. For example, if a person is to be diagnosed with a disease such as epilepsy, they need to undergo a 24-hour EEG test. As Professor Friston explained, the recording of that 24-hour EEG “will be carefully analyzed by specialists who can make a differential diagnosis … to determine what further investigation is needed.” He, like many doctors, is concerned about uninformed consumers who use these devices to perform medical interventions without consulting a specialist.

Friston added that 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 respect like a household thermometer. “Are thermometers useful in managing the well-being of my children? Yes,” he explained, “can your thermometer tell you what virus you have? No.” “In situations of well-being and to supplement or confirm practices such as mindfulness and meditation, they can be pleasant and useful devices for many.” But, basically, that’s all he feels they can be, especially right now.