Which EEG headset
bthomas999
pittsburgh
in Headware
Hello, I want to get and EEG kit. What is everyone's recommendations? Also, I would rather have the cap but the 3d printed headset is cheaper. Is there more artifact in one or the other? Any recommendations of the headset or the board?
Comments
Hi @bthomas999, I think it may have more to do with:
In my case, I am doing it for personal reasons / personal research. So for example, I have simplified my needs to a Ganglion using one electrode plus ref and ground. (I might use up to 3 placed electrodes ... maybe) So, I can get away with a simple velcro headband. But you may have something more intensive than that. What would you like to use it for?
Thanks for the response! I am a beginner, but I would like to use it for at least two projects for personal reasons. One, I would like to know which brain wave state someone is in (alpha, beta, theta, etc.) I don't know if that needs to be whole brain monitoring or just PFC? still need to research. I also don't know how many electrodes I would need for this. The second application would be neurofeedback but I suppose I need to know a lot more before I take on that project. Any suggestions or resources I may find useful?
Hi, I am a hobbyist. And I am new to OpenBCI myself but I have had this hobby for about 15 years. One of the real pros or academics on this forum may have a completely different viewpoint from my own. Interpret the following with this in mind.
For personal use/personal development/non-academic needs, fewer electrodes are just fine. In fact, many professionals in the field can apply therapies to their clients perfectly well using from one to 4 electrodes. Similarly, you do not need a complicated headset for that. In this use case, you want to do personal SMR uptraining, or to perhaps personal sleep studies, or personal well being. Simpler is definitely better for setup and easier data acquisition. So think: Ganglion and the headband kit.
If what you want is more academic in nature, ie: you are (or plan to be) studying this field more seriously, then it might be worth the money and time for more electrodes/more controllable headset. This is the kind of road you can go down if you're really interested in QEEG, for instance, or perhaps behavioral studies. The more wires, electrodes to adjust, and more complex data acquisition for you to deal with. (Truly - fiddling with multiple misbehaving electrodes can be very frustrating and a time-waster) For this use-case, think: Cyton + Daisy and the headset or the cap. If you want to do sleep study type work, or if the subject might move around more, maybe one of the caps is better as they fit closely to the scalp. But the printed headset might be better if you had need for the active electrodes, for instance.
Now, maybe your needs don't fit those categories well: Maybe you have the resources for the Cyton? But you're not sure about the headset, and still on the fence about just doing the PFC work? I might advise that your first dip into the waters would be the Cyton and just the simple headband kit: you can always upgrade the Cyton to include the Daisy for more electrodes, and you can always upgrade the headgear later, once you figure out exactly what you want to do. If you have the money for the Cyton, then this is the route I would suggest, as it offers future flexibility with the more reasonable initial cost and easier first steps.
I understand your desire to jump into the whole brain monitoring: I would love to have the time and resources to try sLoreta, myself. My two cents: maybe don't jump into that level for the first project, even if you can afford the kit to do it. A lot of good work and personal research can be done with 2 eeg sites alone, and is a great way to find out how the body works. Susan Othmer's clinical guide has 1- and 2-site protocols - I don't think that more than five wires are needed for any of her therapies.
Well, it I comes down to how much money do you want to invest and the purpose (projects,etc). I bought myself the cap starter kit with cyton and daisy. Openbci had a sale sometime ago (2022) and prices where convenient. 16 channels may seem too much on the beginning, but then I'm a professor at PUC Campinas and I plan to do little research, therefore I never know. Regards
Very helpful. thanks for the info.
Dear evolution,
I found your reply to bthomas helpful and encouraging. You seem to know a bit about electrodes. What about analysis?
I´m almost the opposite of you, in that I´m a retired shrink but got interested in the possibilities of EEG & published a few papers - just as I was retiring! Like you, I found just three electrodes (Fp1, Fp2 & Cz) more than sufficient and, together with earth and reference electrodes, used a Neurobit Optima-4 to record EEGs and BioEra Pro for analyses. Unfortunately, although BioEra is powerful and flexible, there are no online (nor even seminars to physically attend) websites to learn how to use it. Would be very grateful if you knew of a link. I´d also like to add an electrodermograph and an electromyograph to complete objective measurement of CANEO psychometry.
Hi @jmNZ,
I only know what I have struggled with in the past, otherwise I am just a grasshopper compared to many others in the world of EEG, EMG, and EKG. I myself use 1 signal channel electrode at Pz (an "earplug" wet/water electrode that I hacked together with velcro, a snap electrode, and silicon tubing) and 2 earclip electrodes for ground and ref on the Ganglion. Eyes closed, sitting still. Minimal setup, minimal cleanup, reusable. This is my regular workhorse. I use it for meditation feedback in the morning, then when done I can go straight to work, no residue in my hair. While it is great for my use, it has a noisy impedance of 15 kOhm at best and it is particularly good at picking up more noise from mains power, so it is probably not adequate for analysis.
I am still tuning my new personal electrode setup for the Cyton (8 channel) and ThinkPulse electrodes. I am working through how to get the range of the signals around zero (they are currently off by quite a lot). In this case: 2 earclips (ground and ref - known as Bias and SRB respectively on the Cyton), and two active electrodes (Fz, Pz) both referenced to SRB.
Despite having to tune this new setup, I think that for analysis active electrodes are a good way to go. On skin that is only lightly moistened, I can achieve 3 - 5 kOhm impedance fairly easily. Very close to "strap it on, and go" ease of setup. If you are monitoring EMG during movement (such as for motor biofeedback) during EEG, I think you can get very good signal using a velcro headset, as you can tighten it for a snug fit for light movement. I am not sure this would be your best choice for a moving subject. Maybe a more traditional cap is needed for vigorous head movement. Things are much simpler if your subjects are sitting still.
The Cyton will definitely give you the flexibility to collect EEG, EKG and EMG all at once, and it supports the active electrodes. The Ganglion will also be able to support variations of your EEG protocol and even the EKG. However the separate Emotibit can capture GSR and heart rate (and more).
Software: I hope @wjcroft can help here. He is knows a bit more than I do, especially around the paid software. I use BrainBay and I only do EEG myself, which works fine. It won't support signals from the Emotibit, and I myself do not do off-line analysis (ie: export to MatLab or QEEG). William and I had a chat about software in general, before: https://openbci.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/3522/which-software-package-for-neurofeedback-ganglion#latest
I think you are in the EU, and if so, here is the BioEra page for training. https://brain-trainer.com/product/wbt-bioera-eu/
Its unfortunate that they don't have a forum. Maybe William can suggest other forums where there is more discussion covering BioEra. I find it surprising that there are no professional discussion areas covering BioEra usage. Sorry I do not have more to offer you on this.
I have tried setting up OpenVibe (also free) for Cyton, but it does not really support the eyes-closed protocols I like to implement. It supports eyes-open feedback and data collection/acquisition/stimulation-response and may be useful in that regard.
I myself do not know anything about CANEO Psychometry, so I cannot advise for that - I would like to hear about it.
Very many thanks, evolution. I will chase up the EU BioEra link.
CANEO (or OCEAN or CANOE, etc. - choose your acronym!) is the acronym for the names the psychologists give to the five main dimensions of personality (aka ´the Big Five´). C and A approximate to self and the world, mediated by histamine and acetylcholine respectively. They unite together as the Berger rhythm develops until self-awareness appears, at the age of 5. N, E & O are Eysenck´s neuroticism, extraversion and psychoticism. which are driven by nuclei in the midbrain.
If you play chess, a simple way to visualize this is: C is the king, A is the queen, N is the rooks, E the knights & O the bishops.
Papers I wrote come up if you google CANEO psychometry and EEG.
http://www.bioera.net/support/forum.jsp
https://groups.io/g/brain-trainer/
William, thanks! ^
Oooohhh boy, I detect a rabbit hole of reading for me to fall into, @jmNZ!!
I first got interested in EEG years ago, reading about Self, Addiction and Violent behavior.
How do you read the Eulerian plotting? Given the 5 (or 4) dimensions, I'd think a polar spider plot would be a good device for a plot...
But more importantly, how do you determine the dimensions from EEG? Is that what the ongoing research is to determine?
Ha! Ha! evolution: yes, it is a bit of a rabbit-hole but as fascinating as Alice´s in Wonderland.
I describe how to produce an Eulerian polar plot of an EEG in the "Cartesian Bridge" paper. It´s very simple to do and produces what I call a "psychogram", conveniently in one ´frame´, rather than a long Cartesian time-series.
The CANEO psychometry is reliable and valid but, inevitably, subjective. The psychogram offers the hope of an objective psychometry of personality.
Sorry, didn´t answer your last question. I plotted the EEGs and measured the psychometries of 80 subjects and then used statistical analyses (SPSS) on MATLAB to try and find correlations between the psychometries and any linear combination of parameters of the EEGs.
On the dimensions, they split: three (N, E & O) are heritable; two (C & A) are determined by nurture between birth and five years old, when thy combine as Ψ, effectively reducing the dimensions to four: NEOΨ. This is more amenable to mathematical analysis, such as with quaternions.