Question

Describe how you would design a bioinstrument to measure the beta waves of an electeoencephalogram. Talk anout the electrode type, type of filter, and filter specification, patient safety, instruction to patient to insure accurate signals are captured.

Answer 1

The Wearable EEG Meditation Headset

Biofeedback headsets measure your brain waves, using EEG. They're small bands that sit easily on your head and measure activity through sensors. EEG stands for Electroencephalography, but you'll be forgiven for not remembering that.

EEG: Measuring Electrical Activity in the Brain

These signals go up and down in intensity, resembling waves: these are your brain waves. We can measure brain waves using a technique known as electroencephalography (EEG), in which small detectors, called electrodes, are placed on a person's head .

In my opinion, the easiest way to increase beta waves is listening to beta binaural beats. Beta binaural beats are nothing more than a track with two beats, where one is played on each ear at different frequencies. For example, the right ear may have a tone tuned to 220Hz and the left one to 200Hz.

Our brain is made up of billions of very specialized brain cells. These super specialized cells are called "neurons". Neurons use electrical impulses to communicate with each other, which is a very complex process. Depending on the current situation, there is a high electrical activity in the brain or not. Typical examples are active thinking and sleeping. During active thinking, many neurons send off electrical impulses, whereas in sleep, there only little brain activity and so, there is also little "communication" amongst the neurons. The electrical impulses also differ in speed and amplitude. You can imagine, that in active thinking there needs to be more brain activity in order to process information faster and so, the brain waves are also faster.

The beta brain waves are one of the four main brain waves (the other ones are alpha theta and delta brain waves). Our brain is at all times in a specific brain wave state. When we are awake and doing our job, study, solve math problems and so on, we are normally in the Beta brainwave state.

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MAR 25, 2020

What Are Beta Brainwaves? Improve Focus and Motivation With Beta Brainwave Entrainment

SLAVEN CVIJETIC

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Overview of the four basic brain waves

Introduction

Our brain is made up of billions of very specialized brain cells. These super specialized cells are called "neurons". Neurons use electrical impulses to communicate with each other, which is a very complex process. Depending on the current situation, there is a high electrical activity in the brain or not. Typical examples are active thinking and sleeping. During active thinking, many neurons send off electrical impulses, whereas in sleep, there only little brain activity and so, there is also little "communication" amongst the neurons. The electrical impulses also differ in speed and amplitude. You can imagine, that in active thinking there needs to be more brain activity in order to process information faster and so, the brain waves are also faster.

The beta brain waves are one of the four main brain waves (the other ones are alpha theta and delta brain waves). Our brain is at all times in a specific brain wave state. When we are awake and doing our job, study, solve math problems and so on, we are normally in the Beta brainwave state.

What Are Beta Brainwaves?

Beta brain waves mainly occur, when we are awake and doing a task that involves active thinking. For example, students in school or university will display many on an EEG (an EEG is an instrument that is used to measure brain waves), as long as they are paying attention. Also, people in a job will mostly show many beta brain waves. As a counter example, people watching TV are in a rather relaxed state and will not have that many beta brain waves.

The range of beta waves is from approximately 13 Hz to nearly 40 Hz. They typically have a high amplitude.

Beta waves are linked to the conscious mind. In meditation, it is very advisable to make the meditative experience "conscious" by talking about it, writing it down, and so on. Normally, one slows down the brain and ideally, all the beta brain waves vanish (this is not true for analytical meditations and for meditations that involve words by either listening to them of thinking of them). Meditators experience each meditation individually (states of ecstasy, insight, inspiration, relaxation and so on), but these experiences can be forgotten very fast after the meditation is finished. The reason is we were not really conscious right after the end of it, our brain waves were still alpha and theta waves and the experiences stay "subconscious" (the theta brain wave state is linked to the subconscious mind) if we do not "bring the to light". This can be very beneficial for any meditator!

Benefits of Betawaves

There are a number of benefits of having a healthy amount of beta brainwaves or increasing them:

Concentration: When we concentrate, we have plenty of beta waves. When you cannot really focus on something for any reason it is advisable to listen to beta binaural beats in order to stimulate your brain to go into concentration mode.

Motivator: It is said that increasing beta waves in students, who are demotivated with studying, can be a true motivation boost. I can confirm (amongst many other people) this claim. If you are ever bored with homework and exams I recommend you listening to beta binaural beats.

Enhancement of language and reading skills: Studies have shown that if people are exposed to beta binaural beats for a certain period of time, they can increase the lingiustic skills of an individual (besides concentration and mathematical thinking). These experiements can be found on the internet.

Effective treatment for ADD: EEGs have shown that children with ADD have little to no beta brain wave activity. So, it is very hard for such children to stay focused on a task. Studies have shown that if such children are exposed to beta binaural beats, they will eventually become more focused and ADD vanishes, as their brain starts to produce beta brain wave states automatically and naturally.