Are the new mobile wireless EEG headsets reliable for the evaluation of musical pleasure?

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 20th century, electroencephalography (EEG) has been used in a wide variety of applications, both for medical needs and for the study of various cerebral processes. With the rapid development of the technique, more and more precise and advanced tools have emerged for research purposes. However, the main constraints of these devices have often been the high price and, for some devices the low transportability and the long set-up time. Nevertheless, a broad range of wireless EEG devices have emerged on the market without these constraints, but with a lower signal quality. The development of EEG recording on multiple participants simultaneously, and new technological solutions provides further possibilities to understand the cerebral emotional dynamics of a group. A great number of studies have compared and tested many mobile devices, but have provided contradictory results. It is therefore important to test the reliability of specific wireless devices in a specific research context before developing a large-scale study. The aim of this study was to assess the reliability of two wireless devices (g.tech Nautilus SAHARA electrodes and Emotiv™ Epoc +) for the detection of musical emotions, in comparison with a gold standard EEG device. Sixteen participants reported feeling emotional pleasure (from low pleasure up to musical chills) when listening to their favorite chill-inducing musical excerpts. In terms of emotion detection, our results show statistically significant concordance between Epoc + and the gold standard device in the left prefrontal and left temporal areas in the alpha frequency band. We validated the use of the Emotiv™ Epoc + for research into musical emotion. We did not find any significant concordance between g.tech and the gold standard. This suggests that Emotiv Epoc is more appropriate for musical emotion investigations in natural settings.

Interbrain emotional connection during music performances is driven by physical proximity and individual traits

“…We compensated for the potential nonspecificity of TI calculation (over a large range of frequency across all electrodes) by using the ThetaCo calculation (theta range across frontal and temporal electrodes), in line with recent and older EEG literature about musical reward. 55,56,63,65,66 Since the musical reward literature is very specific, applying another frequency-and brain region-specific calculation to our data in line with EEG hyperscanning literature related to social interaction experiments could also provide an interesting perspective to reveal more about the specific neuronal mechanisms of shared appraisal.…”

“…Before the experiment, we conducted an independent study to ensure that the mobile EEG headset EMOTIV EPOC + used in this study could provide relevant information about musical emotion and musical pleasure mechanisms in the frequency domain. 63 The recordings were performed with the sampling rate fixed at 128 Hz. For more details, see the technical specifications at the following address: https://www.emotiv.com/product/emotiv-epoc-14-channel-mobile-eeg/#tab-description (see also Fig.…”

Portable EEG for assessing attention in educational settings: A scoping review

“…The signal quality of portable EEG has been verified in short recording durations, but there is little evidence regarding long-term signal quality. While portable EEG devices have been validated in different tasks (Chabin et al, 2020;Kam et al, 2019;Khng & Mane, 2020), sites (Edwards & Trujillo, 2021;Ladouce et al, 2019), andpopulations (McWilliams et al, 2021;Xu et al, 2022) within a short recording duration (e.g. in 10 minutes), few studies investigated the long-term stability of portable EEG devices.…”

Human state anxiety classification framework using EEG signals in response to exposure therapy

“…The authors deduced the fact that the Emotiv EPOC headset has been substantially better as compared to the other consumer grade device for the classification of variety of control tasks. Moreover, the Emotiv EPOC headset has been used in a range of emotion recognition studies like evaluation of music pleasure [74] and stress [68] with good level of reliability and accuracy. Our study is focused on measurement of state anxiety which is also an emotion that can be reliabily estimated via Emotiv EPOC headband.…”