Brain-tracking headphones can improve focus but they raise privacy concerns

Activity trackers have come a long way. No longer mere step-counters, they can monitor your heart rate, blood oxygen level, and skin temperature, and can even detect whether you suffer from sleep apnea. Now, there’s a new wearable for your brain—and I’ve been testing it out for the past two weeks.

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Boston-based company Neurable announced the launch of its smart headphones, dubbed the MW75 Neuro, which use electroencephalography, or EEG, and artificial intelligence to track the wearer’s focus levels by reading their brain waves. The device sends this data to a mobile app, with the goal of helping the user tweak their habits to improve their work routine.

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Jennifer Chandler, a professor of law at the University of Ottawa, says wearable technology is increasingly generating personal health data that could be used in ways that aren’t always obvious. … Chandler can imagine a scenario in which someone is wearing EEG earbuds while driving a car and gets in an accident. If brain data from that device showed that the person wasn’t alert and focused, they could be at fault.

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