Want a music system that lifts you up when you’re feeling down? Meet this audio headset with bio-signal sensors (key neurotech patent #48)

—

Today we are fea­tur­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing patent by Neu­roSky, cou­pling an audio head­phone set sys­tem with EEG sig­nal detection.

U.S. Patent No. 8,271,075: Audio head­set with bio-sig­nal sensors

• Assignee(s): Neu­roSky, Inc.
• Inventor(s): Cheng‑I Chuang, KooHy­oung Lee
• Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: EEG
• Issue Date: Sep­tem­ber 18, 2012

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘075 patent cou­ples an audio head­phone set sys­tem with EEG sig­nal detec­tion by inte­grat­ing an EEG sen­sor (item 15 in the illus­tra­tive image) into the audio ear­piece to estab­lish a sens­ing head­set that is unlike­ly to cause dis­com­fort or oth­er­wise detract from the audio head­phone user’s expe­ri­ence. The ear­piece sen­sor is cov­ered by fab­ric to enhance the user expe­ri­ence, and may be cou­pled with oth­er EEG sen­sors for addi­tion­al brain sig­nal detec­tion, such as the sen­sor shown by item 17 in the illus­tra­tive image.

While pre­sent­ing what may be con­sid­ered to be a small num­ber of claims (one inde­pen­dent claim and 11 depen­dent claims), the intro­duc­tion of brain sig­nal detec­tion tech­nol­o­gy (a some­what rel­a­tive­ly uncom­mon con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy) with a com­mer­cial audio head­set (a rel­a­tive­ly com­mon con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy) are among the fac­tors that con­tributed to mak­ing the ‘075 patent a key non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

An audio head­set with bio-sig­nal sen­sors is pro­vid­ed. In some embod­i­ments, an audio head­set that includes one or more elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG) sen­sors is provided.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 1. An audio head­set comprising:

• a first side por­tion of the audio head­set hav­ing a first ear­piece attached to the first side por­tion so that the first ear­piece can be placed on top of, over, or inside a user’s ear when the audio head­set is worn by the user; and
• a first bio-sig­nal sen­sor posi­tioned inside of the first ear­piece that is capa­ble of rest­ing against a skin por­tion of the ear of the user when the audio head­set is worn by the user, where­in the first bio-sig­nal sen­sor is a fab­ric elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG) sen­sor com­pris­ing a strip of con­duc­tive fab­ric wrapped around a por­tion of the first ear­piece for detect­ing brain­wave sig­nals, where­in the strip of con­duc­tive fab­ric includes a fab­ric EEG sen­sor and extends radi­al­ly from a cen­ter of the inside of the ear­piece to an edge of the earpiece.

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–including the one above–check out this IP & inno­va­tion neu­rotech report.