A new smartphone app aims to ease stress and guide users through meditation by monitoring brain waves that change as people become more relaxed.<\/p>\n
Transcend, made by the Canadian company Personal Neuro Devices, links the smartphone to a separately sold headset that records electrical activity along the forehead.<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re meditating as part of a secular practice, or spiritual practice. It all creates the same change in the brain,” said Chad Veinotte, a director of the company, which launched the app last month.<\/p>\n
The user picks the duration of time for the meditation and can also opt to listen to a guided audio meditation. A candle graphic in the app grows brighter as the quality of the practice increases, which is determined by brainwaves that indicate relaxation and concentration.<\/p>\n
A graph in the app also shows the quality of meditation in real time throughout the session.<\/p>\n
“You get to literally look at what’s happening in the mind while you’re doing the practice,” Veinotte said.<\/p>\n
Transcend is one of several apps available for the MindWave headsets made by San Jose, California, company NeuroSky, and which connect to smartphones wirelessly. San Francisco-based company Emotiv Systems also creates headsets that run apps.<\/p>\n
NeuroSky’s CEO, Stanley Yang, said other uses for the headsets include concentration and focus games.<\/p>\n
Veinotte said the headsets, which are also known as brain computer interfaces, will become popular just as sensor-based fitness apps that track distance and speed have.<\/p>\n
“We’ll see headsets shrink and get more compact and easier to use, and become something you can wear all day every day,” he said.<\/p>\n
Headset manufacturers are working on making them more practical for everyday use by integrating them into musical headsets, and by making them more stylish.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to see an explosion in the types of applications available and the way in which people start paying attention to their minds,” Veinotte said.<\/p>\n
The app is available for Android. An iPhone version is expected to be released soon.<\/p>\n
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