The false "brains make minds" dogma has inspired medical predators and quack gadget sellers. One guy has made an enormous fortune luring people into medically unnecessary PET scans that have a significant chance of increasing someone's risk of cancer.
PET scans involve the injection of radioactive materials into the body. The radioactive materials have a short half-life, and neuroscientists claim the scans are not risky. But there is every reason to suspect that such scans involve very significant risks to people. PET scans involve significant doses of ionizing radiation that increase the chance of cancer. A PET scan typically involves as much radiation as a CT scan, and it is well-known that every CT scan that you have slightly increases your chance of cancer. A page on the website of the American Cancer Society says this:
"A PET/CT exposes you to about 25 mSv of radiation. This is equal to about 8 years of average background radiation exposure."
How does that translate to an increased cancer risk? Using the calculator at the web site www.xrayrisk.com (which also allows you to calculate the risk of other things such as CT scans), we get the estimate below:
The guy I refer to above is someone who lures people into paying huge amounts of money for medically unnecessary and potentially hazardous PET scans, under the false premise that such scans will tell you something you did not know about your mind. Scanning brains sheds no insight on a person's mind. But a scammer can always dredge up some low-quality Questionable Research Practices study to try and make it look like some tiny thing found here or there in a brain scan has some value in telling you something about your mind.
A company called ATLAS has recently announced some very expensive brain monitoring product that has similarities to what I mention above, except that in this case no objection can be made about a potential health hazard (the product seems to involve no health risk). The product is announced in the recent press release here. Strangely, the press release has no picture of what the device looks like when someone is wearing it. Looking around in the company's site, we get this image:
You have to wonder: how could such a device stay in the shown position? Through some adhesive, perhaps? I would have thought that the way to invent a continuous EEG-like device for monitoring brain waves would have been to create something that leveraged the ear-touching parts of eyeglasses.
But let's ignore this issue, and ask: is there any reason to think that such a device might be worth its very high cost? The device has a price tag of 499 dollars, and also requires a 30 dollar a month subscription.
The press release fails to mention any benefit in any convincing way. The press release gives us this laughable sales pitch:
"Imagine a world where data from your own mind helps you redefine what truly matters. ATLAS enables you to ask questions to better understand how your mind works: Was I really present for dinner with my family? Who makes me feel more like myself? Do I actually perform better under pressure? Why am I defining a successful run in minutes rather than stress relief? When I'm exhausted, what do I still show up for? ATLAS helps you discover what brings out the best in you everyday and enables you to become more of that person to optimize your life."
This sales pitch is comically bungling. No, wearing some brain wave tracking device will not enable you to ask questions such as the listed questions. You can ask those questions just fine without wearing any such device. And one of the examples of a question is laughable: "Was I really present for dinner with my family?" You don't need some fancy brain wave tracking device to know that. The last sentence in the quote is pure "hot air."
What are brain waves? They are waves that show up in EEG readings taken when lots of electrodes are attached to someone's head. A full EEG reading will involve some cap with many different electrodes positioned at different spots on the top of someone's head. But you can take a kind of "poor man's EEG" by using readings from just one spot in the head.
A full EEG reading
Can EEG readings be analyzed to determine what a person is thinking or feeling? No, they cannot. Nowadays there is a great deal of pareidolia and junk science involving the analyzing of brain waves, typically occurring in studies guilty of Questionable Research Practices. There is no robust evidence that anything someone is thinking or feeling or remembering can be determined from analyzing brain waves (with a very few exceptions such as fear or rage, which might cause something like panic trembling or facial expressions that might be detectable by analyzing brain waves, because of related body movements that cause brain wave blips).
The press release has a chief executive officer of the company telling us this very bad example of groundless BS: "ATLAS gives you a map of your own mind, so you can understand what brings out the best in you, change what doesn't, and become who you want to be." There are no are no EEG readings and no brain scans that can ever produce any such thing as a map of your mind.
A FAQ page of the company offers no specifics that would justify a purchase. We read, "Atlas does not read individual thoughts, decode memories or know the private meaning of what you are thinking." We merely read these dubious claims:
"It can tell whether you're stressed or relaxed, or whether your mind is engaged with the outside world or if you're in your head, reflecting or focusing on deep work. It can also tell when your mind is using a lot of energy and when it is exhausted and in need of some recovery."
EEG readings cannot distinguish between (1) a motionless person with closed eyes who is doing mental work and (2) a motionless person with closed eyes who is resting his mind. But any type of muscle movements can show up in EEG readings, including mere eye movements, strong facial expressions and finger movements. So EEG readings could probably distinguish between someone "engaged with the outside world" in the sense of reading, looking around, or using a smartphone or computer, and someone who was sitting motionless and reflecting, with his eyes closed or staring into space. But why would you need some fancy device to distinguish between those two things, when you would already know which you were doing? And also, you don't need some fancy device to tell you when your mind is exhausted.
A continuous EEG reader might rarely be useful in detecting epilepsy. But only about 1 in 26 people have epilepsy. And epilepsy produces seizures that allow you to detect it without any high-tech device.
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