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I Wore a Brain Sensor Headband to Track Exactly How the Election Ruined Me
The Muse S meditation headband provides data but not solutions
What does anxiety look like? Can we see it and measure it? As someone who tests and writes about tech, including consumer health devices, I’ve been curious about whether and how we can see, measure, and track some of the more nebulous aspects of our health at home on our own, so we can provide doctors and health care teams with more accurate and less subjective information. What does worry look like in my body? How does having low resilience change my sleep or ability to focus?
This has been a rough year for many of us. I don’t need to list all the ways. There’s not a single person I know who isn’t more stressed, more anxious, and less resilient than they were a year ago. In late October, a few days before the U.S. general election, I got my hands on a brainwave-sensing headband called Muse that takes EEG readings—in other words, it measures the electrical signals from your brain. It primarily does this while coaching you through meditation sessions.
I had tested and written about the device when it first came out a few years ago, but the new version comes with added features for tracking biometric data while sleeping. I was eager to try the new version, especially…
