Muse adds brain age tracking after new attention analysis

Muse is bringing brain age tracking to its app as a new analysis suggests regular users of its headbands performed better on a demanding attention test than sporadic users up to three decades younger. The findings draw on around 53,000 training sessions from 189 people aged between 31 and 83.

Consistency counted more than total practice

The research looked at how regularly people completed biofeedback training with a Muse headband over one year. It compared those habits with results from 1,228 completions of a Stroop attention test.

The Stroop test shows users a colour word printed in a different colour. Someone might see the word red written in blue ink, for example, and must identify the ink colour rather than automatically reading the word.

That conflict creates a small delay in response time. Muse used this delay as a measure of cognitive control, which generally becomes slower as people get older.

Across every age group, people who trained in most weeks dealt with the conflicting information around 40 to 50 milliseconds faster than sporadic users. The amount of time spent training mattered less than how regularly they returned.

The most consistent users in their 60s and 70s recorded an average interference time of 192 milliseconds. Sporadic users in their 30s and 40s averaged 219 milliseconds.

That does not mean the older group had younger brains in a medical sense. It does suggest that regular users performed better on this particular task than much younger people who trained less consistently.

This does not prove Muse caused the difference

Muse describes the finding as an association rather than evidence that its headbands improve attention. People who stick to regular brain training may also sleep better, exercise more or have other habits that support cognitive performance.

Frequent users may also become more comfortable with the test itself. The analysis cannot fully separate those factors from the effects of using Muse.

Still, the scale of the at-home dataset makes the pattern interesting. The consistency advantage appeared across all of the age groups studied rather than emerging from a single small subgroup.

Brain age tracking is coming to the Muse app

The company also confirmed that it is bringing brain age tracking into its app. The feature uses resting EEG signals to estimate how old a person’s brain activity appears compared with their chronological age.

Muse says its estimates typically land within around seven years of a person’s actual age. Earlier peer-reviewed research using Muse recordings found that the measurement can also move over time depending on factors such as sleep and recent rest.

In my review, I found the Muse S Athena to be an interesting option for people who want to go beyond basic meditation feedback. It adds detailed cognitive tracking and is the most logical home for features such as brain age.

The older Muse 2 remains the cheaper way into Muse’s EEG-guided meditation system. It lacks Athena’s broader cognitive features, but it still offers the core experience that produced the training data used in this analysis.