Our work allows us to transfer our research ideas into practical solutions for everyday activities. But what exactly does this lab-to-everyday life process entail?

Let’s take a closer look:

🔬 Designing paradigms: Starting from a specific industrial application, the first step is to identify and understand the relevant neurobiological processes involved in this application. To this end, we develop specific experimental paradigms tailored to the relevant mental processes. For example, our "Sparkle Paradigm" is precisely tuned to evoke processes related to workload.

🚀 Lab research: The controlled environment of the laboratory provides ideal conditions to study the mechanisms of the brain in their purest form and highest quality. By continuously fine-tuning our paradigms and analyses, we optimize our data collection procedures and ensure precision and reliability.

Once the underlying neural processes can be reliably triggered and captured, we focus our attention on understanding how these processes are effectively elicited in real-world scenarios.

🔄 Understanding real-world constraints: The transition from lab to industry requires a thorough understanding of real-world constraints. While the lab is the best possible scenario for studying the brain, the real world is a complex, noisy environment with free natural movement, dynamic situations and factors such as user comfort that need to be carefully considered alongside customized specifications.

Working closely with our partners, we specify and characterize these real-world constraints accurately. In this way we can understand the practical constraints and anticipate necessary trade-offs.

Once the main hurdles have been successfully identified and characterized, a work plan is drawn up on how best to overcome them for real-world implementation.

🛠 Navigating real-world vs. laboratory conditions

Natural movements are an example of the strong contrast between the real world and the laboratory environment. Such natural movements cause large motion artifacts that degrade signal quality and present a significant obstacle when trying to accurately capture brain activity.

To address these issues, we conduct customized, ecologically valid experiments that closely replicate real-world conditions while remaining within the controlled limits of the laboratory. In the case of motion artifacts, we can generate similar noisy signals by mimicking natural movements in the lab, allowing us to effectively characterize, detect and remove such artifacts in real time when applying our technology in the real world.

💡 Exploring feasibility and iterating: Once a strategy for issue-mitigation is in place, it is thoroughly explored through further testing and feasibility studies. When we are trying to bring a technology to market, validating our tools and strategy is paramount at every step. We continuously iterate and refine our approach until we achieve satisfactory results.

🌍 Deploying prototypes in real-world settings: Equipped with a validated work plan, we proceed with our prototypes, which we deploy in the real world in collaboration with our clients. Through continuous iterations based on our client feedback, we refine our prototypes until they seamlessly align with our client’s needs and expectations and are ready for use in the real world.

To summarize, the path from laboratory to industry is a complex undertaking. By addressing real-world challenges and making iterative refinements, we unlock the true potential of neurotechnologies to meaningfully impact our daily lives.

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