Experimenting with EEGs using Satori

One of the things I’ve been interested in for a while is cognitive enhancement technologies, like nootropic drugs, noninvasive brain stimulation, and neurofeedback. Another thing I’m interested in is the Quantified Self movement, particularly in relation to cognition. After all, one way to develop cognitive enhancements with a reasonable chance of being successful is first to look at what sort of neurological differences distinguish people who do a task well from those who do a task poorly, or even what factors explain the variance in task performance over time for a single individual.

Unfortunately, despite relatively cheap and easily-available EEG sensors (like the MindWave), there isn’t really any good software for doing what I really want for QS-type experiments: an automated assay of a whole bunch of neurological variables that could automatically find EEG factors which correlated with other variables—say, performance on a cognitive test. So I decided to write one.

Satori is, at its most basic, a program for recording EEG data from a Neurosky MindWave or MindSet and finding the patterns in brain activity which correlate with patterns of performance on psychometric tests. Satori automatically extracts 35 different features from an EEG recording and tries to correlate them with other variables—things like performance on a working memory test or the amount of sleep you’ve gotten the night before.

A few other cool things it can do:

Satori has built-in systems for modulating brain function using binaural beats, neurofeedback, and audio-visual entrainment. Satori can record brain activity while modulation is in progress and automatically measure the effects of the manipulation.

Satori comes with a normative database of EEGs recorded during eyes-closed rest, which can be used to identify unusual features in any particular EEG using Z-scores. Satori also allows for the creation of custom databases.

Satori can automatically generate rules for classifying EEG recordings by supplying it with a “training set” of examples.

Satori is written in Python, only works on Windows, and it’s still under development (so while all of the functions seem to be working decently there might be some bugs). If you’d like to try it out, you can do so by clicking here.