Why We Are Bringing Our Medical-Grade Brain-Sensing Device to Consumers

In today’s world, the tyranny of doing more has robbed us of our rest. And sleep disturbances, such as round-the-clock screen time and snoring, are also ubiquitous. The outcome is an under-slept society facing chronic stress, an inability to be present, and a loss of human connection. It’s becoming evident that when you sacrifice sleep, you risk losing your purpose, your energy, your joy, and, most importantly, yourself.

Sleep is a function of the brain, and the current tools available — sleep supplements, sound machines, and rudimentary tracking apps — are like using a wrench on a malfunctioning rocket without first calibrating mission control. Until now, the average person looking to improve their sleep and understand their brain activity couldn’t do much at home. But at NextSense, we’re on a quest to change this.

Next year, we are bringing to market the first responsive, biosensing sleep earbuds that collect and respond to electrical activity in the brain. The buds, which also function as a premium pair of earbuds, play sounds that help alter brain wave activity to ensure better sleep and a balanced nervous system.

As the founder of NextSense, my goal is to give people access to previously unavailable neurological insights that help them better understand, and alter, their health and sleep patterns. In a world full of health tracking devices, this product will move us a step beyond data collection — to technology that actively improves how you feel.

Where we started

From a young age I was fascinated by the mysteries of sleep. I trained myself to lucid dream, experimented with polyphasic sleep, and read up on the latest sleep research. But it wasn’t clear if or how this fascination might intersect with my career. As a Stanford Computer Science-turned-Philosophy major, I found myself entering a Silicon Valley career. In 2011, I started at what is now called Google Ads. 

At Google, I continued to explore sleep hacking. And when I joined “X”, Google’s Moonshot division, I was tasked with innovating at the intersection of sleep health and the future of computing. Just a few months later, this project got much more personal. My Apple Watch alerted me to a serious heart condition — I was in AFib. My doctors stopped my heart, restarted it, and thankfully I was back in rhythm. Without health-based data on my personal device, I wouldn’t have known, and I still don’t know what might have happened. All I could think was: How do we not have this kind of real time data for the brain? That question was the inspiration for NextSense. 

Just as the Apple Watch had FDA clearance for atrial fibrillation detection, I sought out clearance for epilepsy symptoms, namely seizures, detected in brain waves via a process called electroencephalography (EEG). A seizure has 10 times the brainwave activity as a normal brainwave, but those watching for seizures don’t have access to those warning signs.

Consumers can access and track a growing number of metrics, ranging from blood pressure to blood sugar. Yet data from our most important organ, the brain, remains elusive, even among people with conditions (like epilepsy) that depend on that knowledge. While few people would elect to routinely head to a doctor’s office for a traditional EEG, which involves lots of electrodes, some conductive gel, and clunky machinery, they just might not hesitate to pop in a familiar earbud. 

We had to figure out how to fuse EEG brain-sensing technology with an in-ear device comfortable enough to wear for hours at a time.

Where we are now

We started with epilepsy because the signal is strong for irregular brainwaves. But as we pondered potential consumer applications of our technology, we saw boundless potential. With extensive monitoring (paired with robust privacy protections), we will be uniquely positioned to determine not just the brain wave patterns suggesting disease, but also those that hold the secrets to better sleep, better energy, and more. 

Poor sleep is one of the most pervasive and under-addressed public health crises; and EEG is the gold standard for measuring it. More than a third of Americans are getting fewer than 7 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period and daytime sleepiness is on the rise. The loss of sleep has far-reaching consequences both for individual well-being and our society as a whole. Numerous illnesses are connected to poor sleep. Beyond productivity concerns, there are other dangerous consequences from car and workplace accidents, to inability to bring your best to your relationships, interests, and careers.

The good news is you have a choice. You can choose to live a more fully awake life—and Tone Buds by NextSense can help you do that. Our technology goes beyond tracking. We’re here to offer real-time, personalized, science-backed interventions to help you harness the restorative and revitalizing power of deep rest. Our intuitive and easy-to-use technology will recover the energy you assumed long gone, not so that you can take on more, but so that you can simply be your best self.

Where we are headed next

How many more people would conduct a sleep test to identify sleep and health disorders if it was as easy as popping ear buds in overnight, rather than sleeping at an uncomfortable sleep clinic hooked up to machines? We will see. We will also see what else we can do with widespread data on brainwave irregularities.

We picture a future where we can alter and calm the nervous system to ensure deeper sleep, decrease anxiety, and tune out the sounds keeping us up. We hope to accomplish in seconds what decades of meditation practice might. While I may not be able to control my dreams like I envisioned at 18, the result of NextSense’s research, and big plans, will be even better. We want to give people the chance to live life fully awake.