CES Companies Hope Your Brain Will Be the Next Big Thing in Computing

At every CES I’ve been to, there have been one or two gadgets promising to improve your mental health. In recent years, the number of companies making forays into this area has increased and will likely continue to do so in the future. Could it be that, just like the number of people wearing heart monitoring devices today, everyone will be attaching an EEG to their skull in a decade or so? It’s more likely than you think, so it’s worth asking what these devices are used for, what benefits they might provide, and where the science stops and the hype begins.

An electroencephalogram (EEG) is a clinical tool for monitoring the electrical activity of our brain. In very simple terms, our mind is constantly moving ions and when they reach the scalp it is possible to measure these ions. By placing electrodes on the scalp, you can record the voltage changes emitted by our brain more or less in real time. These tensions are generally grouped into categories, often described as brain waves. Each represents a different state of mind: Gamma (intense thinking), Beta (anxious or active), Alpha (relaxed), Theta (creative or dreaming) and Delta (sleepy).

Professor Karl Friston from University College London, is one of the world’s most influential neuroscientists and an expert in brain imaging. He explained that these technologies can be used to diagnose problems with both the structure and function of the brain. And although there are many technologies available to study how our brains work, “we are still far from understanding the brain the way we understand the heart.” Generally speaking, EEGs are a fairly simple tool for observing how our minds work, but they have an advantage over more complex methods such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) because they work in real time.

Consumer EEGs are not new. In 2011, I tested the Zéo Mobilea small device that you stick to your forehead and wear overnight. It monitored your sleep and set off an alarm when you were at the peak of a sleep cycle, so you woke up quite easily. It worked well, but with one drawback: it’s difficult to sleep with a hard plastic washer stuck to your forehead.

EEGs are more recently used as part of brain-computer interfaces or as neurofeedback tools to help you calibrate the quality of your meditation. InteraXon, for example, makes the Muse headbands that will monitor your brainwaves and tell you when you change states. Last year, EEG startup Neurable partnered with Master & Dynamic to launch the MW75S Neuroa pair of premium headphones designed to track your concentration levels. When your attention begins to wane, the system alerts you and advises you to rest in hopes of alleviating burnout.

At this year’s CES, Neurable announced a partnership with HyperX, HP’s gaming arm, to produce EEG headsets with specific benefits for gamers. As gamers look for a way to improve their performance, the company has developed algorithms and training programs to help them. You may already know that being in a high-stress place is not good for your focus and concentration. Therefore, research scientist Dr Alicia Howell-Munson introduced me to a system that encourages you to achieve a state of calm concentration with demonstrable improvements in reaction time and accuracy. This is a system initially designed in partnership with the Singapore Air Force to ensure pilots remain in a state of calm concentration.

I attended this demo myself, first testing my skills in Aimlabs (a tool people use to test their reflexes) where my accuracy and reaction times were measured. Then, while wearing Neurable’s helmet, I had to practice focusing my attention on a galaxy of dots. The greater my concentration, the closer and slower the dots were. This wasn’t an easy process, and it took me almost five minutes to reach the point where I could consolidate all the dots into a single point on the screen. But when I did, I returned to the shooting range and saw dramatic spikes in my performance. My accuracy increased from 91.3 to 99.1%, while my reaction time increased from 623 ms to 532 ms.

Neurable believes that its systems, designed to integrate with any manufacturer’s equipment, have the potential to significantly increase a person’s brain health and productivity. For example, by taking a break when a person’s concentration began to wane, they were able to bounce back and function much longer than if they had simply pushed harder. Likewise, the company can advise you on your cognitive speed and brain age and guide you towards healthy choices. The company says it’s not just about well-being, as being able to identify loss of concentration is essential, for example to help reduce car accidents when truck drivers feel tired.

Co-founder Adam Molnar explained that the benefits of this technology accumulate over time, so the more a user practices finding this mental state of calm focus, the easier it will be to maintain it for longer. CEO Ramses Alcaide added that the company’s goal is to enable people to visualize the often invisible symptoms of cognitive stress to ensure they are taking care of themselves. He added that one thing that sets Neurable apart from other companies is that it looks at much finer details from its EEG data.

Many companies at CES are using EEGs for more specific purposes, such as My waves. It uses an EEG as part of its wider offering to use sound patterns to make it easier to fall asleep. He sells you an expensive forehead-worn EEG that you wear for a few nights over the course of a year. From there, the system produces a half-hour audio file that will reflect the pattern of your delta brainwaves. He claims that if you listen to the track before you go to bed, the experience of hearing your delta waves will help you fall asleep faster and experience more REM sleep.

And many companies make EEGs that you can wear to monitor your mental health. Brain-Life, for example, showed off an early prototype of Focus+, an EEG headband with a companion app that can offer insights into your cognitive load. It can also tell you how long you can maintain your attention and how well your mind relaxes and recovers. The company did not say when the hardware would be available or how much it would cost, as it is still in its early stages.

There is broad potential for using an EEG as a brain-computer interface, like the one Braineulink has been working on. This company combined EEG with an AR headset to allow people to interact with the world with just their brains. For example, during a demo at the CES show, I was able to turn a light on and off by “focusing” on it, although it’s unclear how useful this would be, for example, in creating an assistive device for people with limited mobility. Like Brain-Life, we are still in our early stages so there are no products that we can point to, but it is clear that we are going to see more startups looking to enter this world.

As EEGs become more common, it is likely that they will be integrated into smaller devices that will fit more easily into our lives. One such example is NAOX, a French startup that has integrated a clinical-grade wearable EEG into a pair of headphones for the type of longitudinal testing required to diagnose diseases like epilepsy. But the company also plans to integrate this technology into a pair of truly wireless earbuds. These headphones won’t arrive until late 2026, but Naox says the technology is small enough that it can be integrated into other companies’ headphones. Therefore, it is certainly plausible that we could see many headphones that will monitor our brain health as a side hustle.

NAOX was co-founded by Dr Michel Le Van Quyen who, at a conference in London in December 2025spoke about the rationale for creating an in-ear ECG. Essentially, he sought to build a brain equivalent to the Apple Watch’s continuous heart rate monitoring (and ECG). I was curious about the science behind an ear-mounted EEG, given that they commonly use the scalp. Professor Friston said an ear-mounted EEG is potentially more useful because “you can get slightly closer to the sources of activity”. And it makes perfect sense to add consumer EEG to wireless earbuds given their usefulness in practices like meditation.

One downside to the proliferation of wearable EEGs is that they could lead users to draw incorrect conclusions about their mental health. For example, if a person is to be diagnosed with epilepsy, they must undergo a 24-hour ambulatory EEG. As Professor Friston explained, the recording of this 24-hour EEG would be “carefully reviewed by experts capable of making a differential diagnosis… to clarify what further investigations are necessary.” Like many clinicians, he worries that uninformed consumers are using these devices to perform medical procedures without consulting a professional.

Friston added that people shouldn’t expect wearable EEGs to be a silver bullet for brain health or cognition. He said the best way for a consumer to approach them is to treat them with the same level of respect as a household thermometer. “Are thermometers helpful in managing my children’s well-being? Yes,” he explained, “can your thermometer tell you what particular virus you have? Absolutely not.” “In the context of wellness and to augment or validate practices like mindfulness and meditation, they can be fun and useful quantitative devices.” ” But, basically, that’s all he thinks they can be, especially right now.