Just-published Apple patent signals aim to measure brain activity using AirPods sensor system

Apple Invents a next-gen­er­a­tion Air­Pods Sen­sor Sys­tem that could mea­sure Biosig­nals and Elec­tri­cal Activ­i­ty of a User’s brain (Patent­ly Apple):

Today the US Patent & Trade­mark Office pub­lished a patent appli­ca­tion from Apple that relates to a next-gen­er­a­tion of Air­Pods Sen­sor Sys­tem where­in the hous­ing and tips of Air­Pods could include a num­ber of active and ref­er­ence elec­trodes con­fig­ured to mea­sure biosig­nals and elec­tri­cal activ­i­ty of a user’s brain. The biosig­nals mea­sured by Air­Pods could include, but are not lim­it­ed to, an elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG), elec­tromyo­g­ra­phy (EMG), elec­troocu­log­ra­phy (EOG) and more.

In Apple’s patent back­ground they note that brain activ­i­ty can be mon­i­tored using elec­trodes placed on the scalp of a user. The elec­trodes may in some cas­es be placed inside or around the out­er ear of the user. Mea­sur­ing of the brain activ­i­ty using elec­trodes placed in or around the out­er ear may be pre­ferred due to ben­e­fits such as reduced device mobil­i­ty and decreased vis­i­bil­i­ty of the elec­trodes when com­pared to oth­er devices that require elec­trodes to be placed on vis­i­ble areas around the scalp of the user.

How­ev­er, for accu­rate mea­sure­ments of brain activ­i­ty using an ear-elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG) device, the ear-EEG device may need to be cus­tomized for a user’s ear (e.g., pos­si­bly cus­tomized for the user’s con­cha, ear canal, tar­gus, etc.) … Because an ear’s size and shape vary from one user to anoth­er, and because a sin­gle user’s ear size and shape, and size and shape of struc­tures such as a user’s ear canal, may change over time, even a cus­tomized ear-EEG device may fail to gen­er­ate accu­rate mea­sure­ments at times (or over time). In addi­tion, a cus­tomized ear-EEG device may be expensive.

The Patent:

• Biosig­nal Sens­ing Device Using Dynam­ic Selec­tion of Elec­trodes (Jus­tia patents)
  Pub­li­ca­tion num­ber: 20230225659
• Abstract: A wear­able elec­tron­ic device includes a hous­ing, and an elec­trode car­ri­er attached to the hous­ing and hav­ing a non­pla­nar sur­face. The wear­able elec­tron­ic device includes a set of elec­trodes, includ­ing elec­trodes posi­tioned at dif­fer­ent loca­tions on the non­pla­nar sur­face. The wear­able elec­tron­ic device includes a sen­sor cir­cuit and a switch­ing cir­cuit. The switch­ing cir­cuit is oper­a­ble to elec­tri­cal­ly con­nect a num­ber of dif­fer­ent sub­sets of one or more elec­trodes in the set of elec­trodes to the sen­sor circuit.
• Filed: Jan­u­ary 9, 2023
• Pub­li­ca­tion date: July 20, 2023
• Inven­tors: Erdrin Aze­mi, Ali Moin, Anu­ran­ji­ni Pra­ga­da, Jean Hsiang-Chun Lu, Vic­to­ria M. Pow­ell, Juri Minx­ha, Steven P. Hotelling

The Patent in Context:

• UCLA launch­es men­tal health study col­lect­ing data from Apple wear­ables to bet­ter under­stand depres­sion and anxiety
• The FDA cre­ates new Dig­i­tal Health unit
• Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright
• Wear­able EEG mon­i­tor­ing start-up Epi­tel rais­es $12.5M to mar­ket seizure detec­tion system