The New Wave of Brain-Sensing Wearables: From Sleep Boosting to Thought Control

A decade ago, Fitbit represented the cutting edge of consumer wearable technology. It didn’t take long for the Apple Watch to overtake it, quickly climbing to become the world’s highest-selling smartwatch. Next came the slimmer, far more low-profile Oura Ring, shifting wearable design toward understated, everyday wear.

Now a whole new category of wearables is emerging, designed not for your wrist or finger, but for your head. Instead of logging step counts, monitoring heart rate, or tracking skin temperature, these gadgets are built specifically to read your brain activity. Using electroencephalography (more commonly known as EEG), they pick up the electrical impulses generated by the brain, then leverage artificial intelligence to interpret those signals.

Take Elemind, for instance. Unlike basic wearables that only log sleep metrics, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup’s device actually aims to enhance sleep quality. Priced at $350, the futuristic-looking headband feels like something straight out of Star Trek, engineered to help users get deeper, more restful rest. It reads individual brain signals to tell whether the wearer is awake or asleep, then delivers pink noise—a specific type of acoustic stimulation—to shift the brain from alert wakefulness patterns to delta waves, the brain activity linked to deep, restorative sleep. In a small trial with 21 participants, the device helped more than three-quarters of users fall asleep faster than they normally would.

For users looking to boost their work performance rather than their sleep, Boston-based Neurable sells a $500 pair of EEG-equipped headphones designed to optimize productivity. Built-in EEG sensors track brain activity linked to focused attention—specifically beta brain waves—giving users real-time insight into how focused they are at any given moment. When I tested the headphones last year, they confirmed what I’d long suspected: my peak focus hits during the early morning hours. The device also prompts users to take periodic breaks if it detects they’ve been deeply concentrated for an extended stretch, a feature I particularly value as someone who spends most of my workday in front of a computer screen.

Tech giant Apple is also dipping its toes into wearable brain technology. In 2023, the company filed a patent for EEG-enabled AirPods, though the product has not yet hit the consumer market. Earlier this year, however, Apple rolled out a new accessibility feature that lets users control its Vision Pro headset with brain activity, rather than physical gestures or inputs. This update means the augmented reality headset can now work seamlessly with brain-computer interfaces (BCIs)—systems that read brain signals to let users control external devices with their thoughts alone.

One neurotechnology company, Cognixion, is already leveraging Apple’s new feature. The Santa Barbara, California-based startup built an augmented reality app to run on Vision Pro, paired with a custom headband that picks up brain signals. For now, Cognixion’s primary focus is using this technology to help restore communication for people living with speech impairments caused by paralysis. Even so, it’s not hard to imagine how a BCI-equipped Vision Pro could be adopted by mainstream consumers for everything from immersive gaming to texting friends using nothing but your thoughts.

Earlier this year, I spoke with Andreas Melhede, founder of Elata Biosciences, who is building what he calls the “open internet of brains”—an open-source network that lets any developer create neurotechnology apps that run on standard EEG devices. The non-profit has built its own EEG device and a version of the classic game Pong, which it demoed this past fall at a cryptocurrency conference in Singapore. Roughly 30 attendees gathered on a restaurant patio to compete in a Pong tournament, but instead of using handheld controllers, each competitor wore a headset that tracked their brain activity. Their goal? Move the on-screen paddle and hit the ball using nothing but their thoughts.

Pong has long been used as a proof of concept for BCI research, including trials by Neuralink. Melhede explained that the tournament was designed to be a lighthearted, accessible way to introduce everyday people to neurotechnology. Developers have already built several other gaming apps for the Elata network, and Melhede hopes to attract research and wellness-focused apps to the platform as well. “It’s really up to the user what they want to do, and up to the developer what they want to build,” he says. He first got the idea for Elata after watching a loved one struggle with depression and anxiety, and he believes wearable neurotech could offer new, accessible solutions for people facing these conditions.

Other wearable neurotech developers are pursuing regulatory approval as medical devices, following the path Apple has taken for several health-focused features on its smartwatches. Sweden’s Flow Neuroscience has developed a headset that delivers a low-intensity electrical current called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to treat depression, paired with a companion app that offers behavioral therapy, guidance, and ongoing symptom monitoring. This past December, the device won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, making it the first at-home, non-pharmaceutical treatment for major depressive disorder available to U.S. consumers. It is already approved for use in the U.K., the European Union, Australia, and multiple other markets. In a clinical trial with 174 participants, 45% of people who used Flow’s device saw their depression symptoms go into remission after 10 weeks, compared to just 22% of participants in the control group who used an inactive placebo device. Flow expects the product to launch in the U.S. in spring 2026, and it is already in use by the U.K.’s National Health Service.

While implanted BCIs are already advancing to the point where they can decode inner speech and detect some unconscious thoughts, no consumer wearable device is advanced enough to read a person’s private thoughts—at least not yet. These consumer gadgets only use AI to identify specific brain wave patterns linked to particular states of mind. Even so, brain wave data is extremely personal, and can reveal a great deal about a person’s mental and emotional state. This has sparked urgent questions about how data collected from these devices will be stored and kept secure. The brain remains the final frontier of personal privacy. Today’s digital advertising is already alarmingly targeted—just imagine if device manufacturers sold their customers’ neuro data to third-party advertisers. Or consider the risk if your employer could see exactly how many minutes of your workday you were not fully focused on your tasks.

Nita Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University and author of Battle for Your Brain, a book about the rise of brain tracking and neurotechnology, predicts that wearable neurotech will eventually become ubiquitous in daily life. “They will become commonplace to the point where they’re not even recognizable as separate wearables like headphones or earbuds—they’ll be tiny tattoos behind your ear, seamlessly integrated with all of your other devices,” she says. “I think that’s the inevitable direction this technology goes: seamless integration, connecting your brain directly to your devices.”