Neurable introduced its own brain-scanning headphones on Thursday, called the Neurable One. The Boston company says wearing the $499 headphones helps users concentrate on work, studying or video games. The headphones go on sale in October through Neurable’s website. Until now, Neurable had put its brain-scanning technology into products made by other brands.
The Neurable One carries 12 EEG sensors inside nylon earpads to monitor brain waves, matching the sensor count of the earlier M&D MW75 Neuro headphones. A new companion app tracks eight brain metrics; the old app will remain available for older hardware for now. The main change is that users no longer have to start a session in the app to capture brain activity, because the headphones passively monitor the brain as soon as they are put on. Neurable cofounder and CEO Ramses Alcaide compared the approach to wearing a Fitbit.
When the headphones detect distraction, they play a ping to bring the user back on track. If they detect burnout instead, they recommend a break. The same headphone-app pairing supports sleep and meditation: a guided meditation session goes quiet when the user is in the flow and resumes guiding when attention drifts, and for naps the volume of guided audio or soundscapes lowers as the user falls asleep. Users can also switch off the EEG sensors and use the headphones as regular headphones.
Alcaide said that when the app reports a low brain battery for the day, he goes to the sauna and to bed early to recover. The app can identify peak brain speed hours so users can schedule their hardest work during those times. A check-in feature called Cognitive Snapshot shows the current brain state and offers recommendations such as guided meditation or small games, and the app provides weekly or monthly reports.
Neurable has no new research or data on the effectiveness of the Neurable One; that work is underway but will take time. The company still points to previous research with the Mayo Clinic that showed a 30 percent increase in focus among people using a Neurable headset compared with people using Pomodoro techniques or other focus-sustaining systems, along with about a 10 percent drop in end-of-day burnout and an increase in end-of-day happiness. The product is not a medical device, and Neurable says it is not designed to diagnose, treat or monitor any conditions. The company promises not to sell brain data and says it does not use that data for advertising. Alcaide said enterprise customers buy headsets in bulk to help employees focus, not to monitor the workforce, and that each user’s data stays with them.
Neurable partnered with an audio brand on the non-brain-scanning parts of the hardware, though Alcaide would not name it. The headphones offer what he called the same premium sound as the earlier M&D collaboration, with 40-mm beryllium drivers, six microphones, active noise cancellation, a transparency mode and 22 hours of run time, or 12 hours with the EEG sensors running. They support Bluetooth 5.2 and the AAC and aptX codecs, and the Neurable app is available on Android and iOS.
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