Elemind, a startup born from MIT innovation, has developed a unique EEG headband that aims to enhance sleep quality by aligning acoustic stimulation with the wearer’s brainwaves.
This pilot-tested device has shown promise in reducing the time it takes for people with sleep onset insomnia to fall asleep. Beyond its primary application, the company explores broader neuroscience applications, including memory improvement and tremor reduction, envisioning a future where brain states can be managed like apps.
Innovative Sleep Technology
Do you ever toss and turn in bed after a long day, wishing you could just program your brain to turn off and get some sleep?
That may sound like science fiction, but that’s the goal of the startup Elemind, which is using an electroencephalogram (EEG) headband that emits acoustic stimulation aligned with people’s brainwaves to move them into a sleep state more quickly.
In a small study[1] of adults with sleep onset insomnia, 30 minutes of stimulation from the device decreased the time it took them to fall asleep by 10 to 15 minutes. This summer, Elemind began shipping its product to a small group of users as part of an early pilot program.
The company, which was founded by MIT Professor Ed Boyden ’99, MNG ’99; David Wang ’05, SM ’10, PhD ’15; former postdoc Nir Grossman; former Media Lab research affiliate Heather Read; and Meredith Perry, plans to collect feedback from early users before making the device more widely available.
The Science Behind Elemind
Elemind’s team believes their device offers several advantages over sleeping pills that can cause side effects and addiction.
“We wanted to create a nonchemical option for people who wanted to get great sleep without side effects, so you could get all the benefits of natural sleep without the risks,” says Perry, Elemind’s CEO. “There’s a number of people that we think would benefit from this device, whether you’re a breastfeeding mom that might not want to take a sleep drug, somebody traveling across time zones that wants to fight jet lag, or someone that simply wants to improve your next-day performance and feel like you have more control over your sleep.”
From Classroom to Cutting-Edge Research
Wang’s academic journey at MIT spanned nearly 15 years, during which he earned four degrees, culminating in a PhD in artificial intelligence in 2015. In 2014, Wang was co-teaching a class with Grossman when they began working together to noninvasively measure real-time biological oscillations in the brain and body. Through that work, they became fascinated with a technique for modulating the brain known as phase-locked stimulation, which uses precisely timed visual, physical, or auditory stimulation that lines up with brain activity.
“You’re measuring some kind of changing variable, and then you want to change your stimulus in real time in response to that variable,” explains Boyden, who pointed Wang and Grossman to a set of mathematical techniques that became some of the core intellectual property of Elemind.
Development of a Noninvasive Brain Modulation Device
Phase-locked stimulation has been used in conjunction with electrodes implanted in the brain to disrupt seizures and tremors for years. But in 2021, Wang, Grossman, Boyden, and their collaborators published a paper[2] showing they could use electrical stimulation from outside the skull to suppress essential tremor syndrome, the most common adult movement disorder.
The results were promising, but the founders decided to start by proving their approach worked in a less regulated space: sleep. They developed a system to deliver auditory pulses timed to promote or suppress alpha oscillations in the brain, which are elevated in insomnia.
That kicked off a years-long product development process that led to the headband device Elemind uses today. The headband measures brainwaves through EEG and feeds the results into Elemind’s proprietary algorithms, which are used to dynamically generate audio through a bone conduction driver. The moment the device detects that someone is asleep, the audio is slowly tapered out.
“We have a theory that the sound that we play triggers an auditory-evoked response in the brain,” Wang says. “That means we get your auditory cortex to basically release this voltage burst that sweeps across your brain and interferes with other regions. Some people who have worn Elemind call it a brain jammer. For folks that ruminate a lot before they go to sleep, their brains are actively running. This encourages their brain to quiet down.”
Elemind’s Future in Neuroscience and Beyond
Elemind has established a collaboration with eight universities that allows researchers to explore the effectiveness of the company’s approach in a range of use cases, from tremors to memory formation, Alzheimer’s progression, and more.
“We’re not only developing this product, but also advancing the field of neuroscience by collecting high-resolution data to hopefully also help others conduct new research,” Wang says.
The collaborations have led to some exciting results. Researchers at McGill University found that using Elemind’s acoustic stimulation during sleep increased activity in areas of the cortex related to motor function and improved healthy adults’ performance in memory tasks. Other studies have shown the approach can be used to reduce essential tremors in patients and enhance sedation recovery.
Elemind is focused on its sleep application for now, but the company plans to develop other solutions, from medical interventions to memory and focus augmentation, as the science evolves.
“The vision is how do we move beyond sleep into what could ultimately become like an app store for the brain, where you can download a brain state like you download an app?” Perry says. “How can we make this a tool that can be applied to a bunch of different applications with a single piece of hardware that has a lot of different stimulation protocols?”
References:
- “A randomized controlled trial of alpha phase-locked auditory stimulation to treat symptoms of sleep onset insomnia” by Scott Bressler, Ryan Neely, Ryan M Yost and David Wang, 6 June 2024, Scientific Reports.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-63385-1 - “Non-invasive suppression of essential tremor via phase-locked disruption of its temporal coherence” by Sebastian R. Schreglmann, David Wang, Robert L. Peach, Junheng Li, Xu Zhang, Anna Latorre, Edward Rhodes, Emanuele Panella, Antonino M. Cassara, Edward S. Boyden, Mauricio Barahona, Sabato Santaniello, John Rothwell, Kailash P. Bhatia and Nir Grossman, 13 January 2021, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-20581-7
Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.
Follow us on Google and Google News.
1 Comment
“The vision is how do we move beyond sleep into what could ultimately become like an app store for the brain, where you can download a brain state like you download an app?” “Some people who have worn Elemind call it a brain jammer.”
Another form of mind control. How about putting the headband on prisoners to keep them docile, or on children to keep them from being too active? Lots of dystopian applications for this mind-altering sonic brainwash. No need to have your brain respond to the real world; just plug in whatever mood or thoughts you want, and live in an app-controlled fantasy world. Of course, people will become addicted to this ability to program their brains artificially, and will lose the ability to cope with reality, which could cause anxiety, depression, and dependence. But there will probably be either a new app for that, or a drug.