A Single-Channel Wireless EEG Headset Enabled Neural Activities Analysis for Mental Healthcare Applications

Electroencephalography (EEG) is a technique of Electrophysiology used in a wide variety of scientific studies and applications. Inadequately, many commercial devices that are available and used worldwide for EEG monitoring are expensive that costs up to thousands of dollars. Over the past few years, because of advancements in technology, different cost-effective EEG recording devices have been made. One such device is a non-invasive single electrode commercial EEG headset called MindWave 002 (MW2), created by NeuroSky Inc that cost less than 100 USD. This work contributes in four distinct ways, first, how mental states such as a focused and relaxed can be identified based on EEG signals recorded by inexpensive MW2 is demonstrated for accurate information extraction. Second, MW2 is considered because apart from cost, the user's comfort level is enhanced due to non-invasive operation, low power consumption, portable small size, and a minimal number of detecting locations of MW2. Third, 2 situations were created to stimulate focus and relaxation states. Prior to analysis, the acquired brain signals were pre-processed to discard artefacts and noise, and band-pass filtering was performed for delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma wave extraction. Fourth, analysis of the shapes and nature of extracted waves was performed with power spectral density (PSD), mean amplitude values, and other parameters in LabVIEW. Finally, with comprehensive experiments, the mean values of the focused and relaxed signal EEG signals were found to be 30.23 µV and 15.330 µV respectively. Similarly, average PSD values showed an increase in theta wave value and a decrease in beta wave value related to the focus and relaxed state, respectively. We also analyzed the involuntary and intentional number of blinks recorded by the MW2 device. Our study can be used to check mental health wellness and could provide psychological treatment effects by training the mind to quickly enter a relaxed state and improve the person's ability to focus. In addition, this study can open new avenues for neurofeedback and brain control applications.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11277-022-09731-w.