Fully concentrated on task at hand? Then your computer won’t distract you

Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 8,055,722

—

Today we high­light a fas­ci­nat­ing patent by IBM that lever­ages brain mon­i­tor­ing (includ­ing EEG feed­back) to sup­press dis­tract­ing notifications–hopefully such a sys­tem will become avail­able soon! 

(As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patents, from old­er to new­er by issue date)

U.S. Patent No. 8,055,722: Noti­fi­ca­tion con­trol through brain mon­i­tor­ing of end user concentration

• Assignee(s): Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Machines
• Inventor(s): David R. Hill
• Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Hybrid
• Issue Date: Novem­ber 8, 2011

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘722 patent dis­clos­es tech­niques for improv­ing per­son­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by lever­ag­ing brain mon­i­tor­ing (includ­ing EEG feed­back) to sup­press dis­tract­ing notifications.
When detect­ed brain sig­nals indi­cate a user is con­cen­trat­ing on a par­tic­u­lar task, the sys­tem sup­press­es oth­er­wise dis­tract­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions such as emails, instant mes­sages, texts and voice­mail. With only three illus­tra­tion sheets and three pages of writ­ten mate­r­i­al, the spec­i­fi­ca­tion may raise ques­tions around the ade­qua­cy of sup­port for claimed sub­ject mat­ter. Nev­er­the­less, the claim breadth, cou­pled with the sig­nif­i­cant remain­ing life of the patent (pro­ject­ed expi­ra­tion of 2029), are among the fac­tors mak­ing the ‘722 patent a key non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

Embod­i­ments of the present inven­tion pro­vide a method, sys­tem and com­put­er pro­gram prod­uct for mes­sage noti­fi­ca­tion man­age­ment through brain mon­i­tor­ing of end user con­cen­tra­tion. In an embod­i­ment of the inven­tion, a method for mes­sage noti­fi­ca­tion man­age­ment through brain mon­i­tor­ing of end user con­cen­tra­tion can include receiv­ing neu­ro­feed­back for an end user through an inter­face for a brain mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem, com­par­ing the neu­ro­feed­back to a thresh­old lev­el of brain activ­i­ty indi­cat­ing a degree of con­cen­tra­tion of the end user, and sup­press­ing mes­sage noti­fi­ca­tions for mes­sages in a mes­sag­ing sys­tem respon­sive to the neu­ro­feed­back exceed­ing the thresh­old lev­el of brain activ­i­ty, but oth­er­wise per­mit­ting mes­sage noti­fi­ca­tions for mes­sages in the mes­sag­ing system.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 1. A method for mes­sage noti­fi­ca­tion man­age­ment through brain mon­i­tor­ing of end user con­cen­tra­tion, the method comprising:

• receiv­ing neu­ro­feed­back for an end user through an inter­face for a brain mon­i­tor­ing system;
• com­par­ing the neu­ro­feed­back to a thresh­old lev­el of brain activ­i­ty indi­cat­ing a degree of con­cen­tra­tion of the end user; and,
• sup­press­ing mes­sage noti­fi­ca­tions for mes­sages in a mes­sag­ing sys­tem respon­sive to the neu­ro­feed­back exceed­ing the thresh­old lev­el of brain activ­i­ty, but oth­er­wise per­mit­ting mes­sage noti­fi­ca­tions for mes­sages in the mes­sag­ing system.

To learn more about mar­ket data, trends and lead­ing com­pa­nies in the dig­i­tal brain health space –dig­i­tal plat­forms for brain/ cog­ni­tive assess­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and enhance­ment– check out this mar­ket report. To learn more about our analy­sis of 10,000+ patent fil­ings, check out this IP & inno­va­tion neu­rotech report.