Muse adds AI-powered brain age tracking to its existing headbands

Smartwatches have been telling us our fitness age for years. Now Muse wants to do the same for our brains, using brainwave readings and a few cognitive tests to work out whether your brain seems younger or older than you actually are.

The new Brain Age feature starts rolling out on October 19 for Muse 2, Muse S and Muse S Athena. It delivers weekly readings, allowing users to track changes over time.

How Muse Brain Age works

The concept is fairly simple. Muse uses four EEG sensors positioned around the forehead and behind the ears to record electrical activity in the brain. An AI model then compares those patterns with age-related changes observed in other users.

The result appears as a difference in years rather than an absolute brain age. You might see that your brain is tracking three years younger than your actual age, for example, or two years older.

There are two parts to the calculation. Alongside regular EEG recordings, Muse uses four short cognitive tests covering processing speed, spatial memory, impulse control and selective attention. The app shows how each component contributes to the overall estimate.

Getting your first result takes some patience. You’ll need at least ten minutes of qualifying daytime EEG sessions on seven separate days, plus all four cognitive tests. Sleep recordings don’t count, despite Muse’s longstanding focus on sleep tracking.

After that, three qualifying EEG days per week are enough to maintain the estimate. Updated Brain Age scores arrive every Monday.

How accurate is it?

So is this a gimmick or is it accurate? That is the obvious question.

The company says it has been working on brain age estimation for some time. We covered its plans to introduce the feature earlier this year, following research involving thousands of at-home EEG recordings.

Muse says its system can estimate a person’s age from brainwave readings with an average error of 3.8 years. So if you’re 50, the estimate could be several years higher or lower. That’s a reasonable result for consumer EEG technology.

Worth mentioning is that there’s a bit of fluctuation in the results. Muse says your estimated brain age can vary by around 1.9 years from one week to the next. That’s why the company recommends looking at how the readings develop over several months, rather than focusing too much on any single week. The feature is also not designed to detect dementia or cognitive decline.

Available on existing headbands

Existing Muse owners won’t need new hardware. The feature supports Muse 2, Muse S and Muse S Athena, all three of which we’ve reviewed over the years. Athena already offers detailed cognitive tracking, so Brain Age fits well alongside its existing measurements.

Everyone gets their first reading free. However, continued weekly monitoring requires Muse Premium.

For Muse, this is another way to put the EEG data collected by its headbands to use. And for existing owners, it’s a new feature they can try without buying another device.