Brain-EE: Brain enjoyment evaluation using commercial EEG headband

Abstract

Previous studies that involve measuring EEG, or electroencephalograms, have mainly been experimentally-driven projects; for instance, EEG has long been used in research to help identify and elucidate our understanding of many neuroscientific, cognitive, and clinical issues (e.g., sleep, seizures, memory). However, advances in technology have made EEG more accessible to the population. This opens up lines for EEG to provide more information about brain activity in everyday life, rather than in a laboratory setting. To take advantage of the technological advances that have allowed for this, we introduce the Brain-EE system, a method for evaluating user engaged enjoyment that uses a commercially available EEG tool (Muse). During testing, fifteen participants engaged in two tasks (playing two different video games via tablet), and their EEG data were recorded. The Brain-EE system supported much of the previous literature on enjoyment; increases in frontal theta activity strongly and reliably predicted which game each individual participant preferred. We hope to develop the Brain-EE system further in order to contribute to a wide variety of applications (e.g., usability testing, clinical or experimental applications, evaluation methods, etc.).