The Creation of A-MUSE-ing

Here is the story...

1. Spark

While looking through the hardware options, Muse caught our eyes. Hardware that could detect brain waves sounded really cool! We decided to pick it up and start experimenting.

2. Testing

We spent countless hours testing and experimenting with the Muse hardware to see what changes in brain activity we could detect. The data was extremely difficult to collect and analyze. We observed that there was a distinct difference in certain brain waves based on video and audio content that a user is viewing.

3. Ideation

Through a rigorous brainstorming process, we came up with an idea to assist advertisers in determining the effectiveness of their ads in eliciting responses in their users.

4. Implementation

We decided to use 2 extreme cases of viewership as a baseline for user’s neural responses. Our first one is an extremely aggressive and loud video and audio clip and our second clip is extremely calm and peaceful. We then show the users clips from real advertisements to test their neural responses relative to the two baselines and give the advertiser information based on aspects such as focus, calmness, and stimulated thinking.

Using our unique analysis of the brain response data to stimuli, we have created a platform for advertisers to test the effectiveness of targeted neural responses in viewers. We learned not only how to work with a completely new technology with little documentation as well as analyzing data to conclude meaningful results, but also various aspects of how our brain works and what aspects of our cognition are related to what brain waves. For the future, we possibly see A-MUSE-ing being fully integrated a business facing software platform as well as having increased accuracy of predicting cognitive signals.

Built With

• bash
• imovie
• muse
• python