EEG has historically required a clinical setting: electrode caps, conductive gel, a technician, and a patient who has to sit still. Naox Technologies just received the first FDA clearance for an in-ear EEG device that captures brain activity through a small sensor worn like an earbud.
The Naox Link is cleared for epilepsy monitoring, sleep studies, and neurological research in patients as young as six, and the device is specifically designed for home environments rather than hospitals. Continuous, ambient neurological data collection will likely open research possibilities that hospital-bound EEG was never designed for, particularly for longitudinal monitoring of conditions like epilepsy or early neurodegenerative disease.
Personally, I think it’s also worth reflecting on how the governance will organize itself around this kind of data. It’s especially interesting since neurodata collected passively, at scale, in everyday settings is a category that doesn't yet have much of a regulatory framework.
