{"id":5108,"date":"2019-11-01T08:00:20","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T13:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=5108"},"modified":"2019-10-24T13:49:14","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T18:49:14","slug":"todays-neuro-nonsense-reading-brainwaves-in-the-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/todays-neuro-nonsense-reading-brainwaves-in-the-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Today’s Neuro-Nonsense: Reading Brainwaves in the Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend recently sent me this link<\/a> to a video story in the Wall Street Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The 6 minute video discusses a program in China that uses a…welll…gizmo<\/em> to measure students’ attention levels during class.<\/p>\n

Everything I know about this particular program comes from the video, so it’s possible I’m missing important information. But, based on the video, I render this temporary verdict:<\/p>\n

THIS IS BONKERS.<\/p>\n

Electroencephalography simply doesn’t work this way. That is: the gizmo is far too crude (and subject to irrelevant stimuli) to produce meaningful measurements.<\/p>\n

And,\u00a0attention<\/em> is far too complex a cognitive process to be measured by three contact points with the skull. (Not joking. THREE.)<\/p>\n

If I gave you a stethoscope and said, “Here. Please measure that’s person mental health,” I suspect you’d refuse.<\/p>\n

You’d say something like this: “I can gather data, and then pretend that those data say something meaningful about a really complex network of mental functions. But you and I both know that this tool simply can’t do what you’re asking it to do.”<\/p>\n

You’d be right.<\/p>\n

One More Point<\/h2>\n

Of course, there’s LOTS to say about the social policy implications of using this gizmo. This isn’t a blog about social policy, so I’ll leave that to other analysts.<\/p>\n

I’m answering the very basic technical question: “can we really do that?” The answer, as far as I know, is “certainly not.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

h\/t Scott MacClintic<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Live EEGs in the classroom just don’t work this way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":5112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[31,19,29],"class_list":["post-5108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-attention","tag-skepticism","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5108"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5114,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108\/revisions\/5114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}