Wearing cat’s ears; you may amuse but don’t be misled by simplistic accounts of Neuroscience

Unsurprisingly, an image of Nicola Sturgeon (First minister for Scotland) wearing a pair of tartan cat’s ears at the launch of a hi-tech digital school was broadcast through both print and social media http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3222275/What-thinking-Sturgeon-tries-bizarre-brain-scanner-enormous-TARTAN-ears.html.

When used as a form of entertainment (or publicity) there is no harm done. However, this device is marketed as a way of augmenting the human body when communicating mood http://www.necomimi.com/WatchTheVideo.aspx and it has been suggested that it could be used by teachers to assess attention in class in real time; that the ears will ‘prick up’ when the wearer is paying attention. According to the instructions one sensor should be placed above the eyebrow and the other clipped to the ear so that the forehead sensor can ‘read’ the electrical impulses generated by neurons firing in the brain. It is claimed that by using this data to control the motor that positions the cat’s ears they can reflect your mental state.

Do the scientific claims for this device hold up? In medical contexts the EEG has been used as an investigative procedure for over 60 years with technical innovations such as solid-state amplifiers and digital methods of analysis being incorporated as they became available. The collection of the EEG record, and its subsequent interpretation, requires expertise based on years of training. You would be unlikely to find a practitioner who would support the claims made for this device. There is a strong likelihood that the electrical impulses that drive the motor are myogenic (originate in muscle) rather than neurally based. When the biosensors are placed as recommended the one above the eyebrow will pick up both eyeblinks and activity in the frontalis muscle (the muscle that you use to raise your eyebrows) while in noisy environments the ear clip will be susceptible to activity in the post auricular muscle as described here http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/100/1/19?ijkey=ecce332eef28da3f167b1373941635f7b915e274&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha and movements of the wearer’s own ears that are under voluntary control.

A single channel electro encephalogram (EEG) is the technical description for this device. There are other manufacturers of such devices which are marketed with suggestions for their use that range from managing a brain-training program to meditation. By contrast a neurophysiologist would expect to have access to at least 21 channels of EEG recorded concurrently from at least 21 biosensors positioned to sample electrical activity over the whole skull area. The neurophysiologist’s skill lies in the interpretation of the patterns of activity across all biosensors. Although the presence and/or amplitude of the alpha frequency is a valid indicator of alertness it is optimally recorded with biosensors placed at the back of the skull. Feel for the midline boney projection at the back of your skull, 5 cms above that would be a good placement. Encouraging a class to use such a device to critically investigate the underlying Neuroscience would have value. Suggesting to teachers and students that such devices are a valid method for monitoring attention and mood is misleading.