Hearables Will Monitor Your Brain and Body to Augment Your Life

Illustration: Anders Wenngren The eyes, it’s been said, are windows to the soul. I’d argue that the real portals are the ears. Consider that, at this very moment, a cacophony of biological conversations is blasting through dime-size patches of skin just inside and outside the openings to your ear canals. There, blood is coursing through your veins, its pressure rising and falling as you react to stress and excitement, its levels of oxygen changing in response to the air around you and the way your body is using the air you breathe. Here we can also detect the electrical signals that zip through the cortex as it responds to the sensory information around us. And in that patch of skin itself, changing electrical conductivity signals moments of anticipation and emotional intensity. The ear is like a biological equivalent of a USB port. It is unparalleled not only as a point for “writing” to the brain, as happens when our earbuds transmit the sounds of our favorite music, but also for “reading” from the brain. Soon, wearable devices that tuck into our ears—I call them hearables—will monitor our biological signals to reveal when we are emotionally stressed and when our brains are being overtaxed. When we are struggling to hear or understand, these gadgets will proactively help us focus on the sounds we want to hear. They’ll also reduce the sounds that cause us stress, and even connect to other devices around us, like thermostats and lighting controls, to let us feel more at ease in our surroundings. They will be a technology that is truly empathetic—a goal I have been working toward as chief scientist at Dolby Laboratories and an adjunct professor at Stanford University . How will future generations of hearables make life better? I’ve envisioned many scenarios, […]

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