Personal Science Week 250625 - Neurable
Do these EEG headphones improve my focus?
Elon Musk’s Neuralink will supposedly allow us to connect our brains directly to the internet, enabling a race of super-smart cyborgs that will out-compete other humans. You can’t quite buy a Neuralink yet, but other companies are rapidly introducing the next best thing: head-based devices that “see” your brain waves.
This week I've been experimenting with new brain-sensing headphones from the University of Michigan’s Direct Brain Interface Lab spin-out Neurable to see if consumer-grade EEG can actually provide useful insights into focus and mental states.
Testing the Neurable MW75 Neuro Headphones
The Neurable MW75 Neuro ($699) tries to be a useful fusion: high-end headphones from luxury audio firm Master & Dynamic combined with electroencephalography (EEG) sensors that monitor brain activity. The company claims their proprietary algorithms can track six cognitive metrics in real-time: calmness, wakefulness, focused attention, physical stress, cognitive speed, and anxiety resilience.
The Hardware Experience
As headphones, these are quite good, though I should note I'm not an audio quality expert. The build quality matches luxury audio designer Master & Dynamic's reputation — comfortable over-ear design, excellent noise cancellation, and what sounds to me like genuinely impressive audio quality. On the other hand, I find them noticeably heavy, and the over-ear design becomes somewhat uncomfortable during extended wear sessions. I can’t wait for the Airpods version.
The EEG sensors are invisible during normal use, positioned strategically around the ear cups to detect neural signals without compromising the listening experience.
Setup is quick and easy: basically you adjust the fit until the app says you’ve got a good connection. Real calibration takes longer: you need five sessions before it gives you a “biofeedback” option that the company says is trained to your individual brain waves. The accompanying app then provides real-time feedback during work sessions.
Real-World Performance Data
During a my week of several hours testing per day, the headphones generated minute-by-minute focus tracking data. The timeline showed clear patterns: sustained concentration during writing, noticeable dips when checking email, and gradual degradation after about 90 minutes of continuous work.
More intriguingly, the system began suggesting "brain breaks" after detecting declining focus — alerts I wouldn't have noticed subjectively. One such break recommendation came after 1 hour 41 minutes, when the app detected a significant drop in focus levels.
The weekly reports show broader cognitive trends. My recent "brain performance" score (69/100) showed a dip heading into the weekend, then a sharp rise.
Monday was my worst day of “focused attention”, while Sunday was best. Cognitive speed and calmness were also best on Sunday, when “anxiety resilience” was worst.
The Napping Experiment
One unexpected result: a 30-minute session where I laid down, closed my eyes, and listened to a monotonous lecture scored a perfect 100% focus rating — the highest of any session. Whether this represents genuine deep cognitive rest, meditation-like brain states, or simply measurement limitations isn't clear. My Apple Watch says I didn’t actually fall asleep, but subjectively, I’ll admit that I felt much better afterwards.
Scientific Skepticism
Several important caveats:
Baseline uncertainty: The metrics lack clear population norms. Is a “69” brain performance score good for someone my age? The system doesn't provide comparative context beyond general age-related decline warnings.
Placebo potential: Wearing a $700 “focus enhancement” device will obviously make me more aware of my brain states, whether the device works or not. The act of monitoring may itself improve concentration through heightened mindfulness — making it difficult to separate genuine EEG insights from behavioral changes.
Signal vs. noise: EEG is notoriously sensitive to artifacts from muscle tension, eye movements, and environmental interference. Consumer-grade sensors face additional challenges compared to clinical equipment.
Validation gaps: Neurable claims to have tested and verified their technology compared to clinical grade equipment, but how well it works for normal people at home is to be determined.
Bottom Line
From a quantified self perspective, the Neurable headphones occupy an interesting niche. The data correlates reasonably well with my subjective focus experiences, and the break reminders seemed useful for maintaining productivity over long sessions.
But the value proposition depends heavily on your tolerance for measurement uncertainty. Like many personal science tools, the insights may matter less than the awareness they create. The mere act of mindful tracking — regardless of absolute accuracy — is already enough to improve focus hygiene and work patterns.
For $699, you're essentially buying premium headphones with an experimental cognitive monitoring system attached. Whether the brain-tracking features justify the cost over simpler focus techniques (Pomodoro timers, meditation apps, basic break reminders) remains an open question.
Personal Science Weekly Links
Speaking of brain tracking, Reddit’s r/LifeProTips offers how to track your natural energy. A user simply wrote their self-perceived energy levels hourly for a week and found, to their surprise that their energy peak was later in the day than they’d thought. See the link for several apps that can track energy levels automatically.
Self-comparison psychology: Than Average offers an entertaining way to see how you compare to others on various traits and behaviors. While "unscientific," it provides interesting perspective on cognitive biases and self-perception.
Methylene blue continues generating interest as a nootropic compound. This overview summarizes potential cognitive benefits and safety concerns. tldr: dosing matters enormously, and most commercial preparations lack proper quality control.
Google's Results About You tool shows what personal information appears in search results — useful for personal scientists concerned about data privacy and digital footprints.
About Personal Science
Personal scientists approach their own biology and psychology with the same rigor professionals apply to research questions: careful observation, controlled experiments, and healthy skepticism about bold claims. We're particularly interested in technologies that let us measure previously invisible aspects of human performance — while remaining cautious about overinterpreting limited data.
This week's brain-computer interface experiment is classic personal science: new measurement tools, collect meaningful data, but maintain critical thinking about what those measurements actually represent. Sometimes the act of measuring matters more than the precision of the measurement itself.
We publish these weekly updates for anyone interested in applying scientific thinking to personal optimization and everyday life. If you have experiments, tools, or techniques you'd like to discuss, let us know.
Unless you are immobilized, with your eyes closed and face relaxed, I don't see how you could get any signal out of the noise... But it's possible that you can use what is in affect EMG (rather than EEG) data to detect when you are in need of a break!
The Goldilocks overview of methylene blue is good, but if you want to understand how it works I suggest the always in-depth Mr. Chris Masterjohn: https://open.substack.com/pub/chrismasterjohnphd/p/methylene-blue-on-the-airplane
tl/dr; MB is an electron acceptor/donor that can bypass parts of the mitochondria that are overwhelmed or not working well. It cannot generate more energy than your mitochondria would if they were healthy, so a safer approach ideally would be to understand what is limiting the mitochondria and fix that….