I Let a Brain-Scanning Headset ‘Prime’ My Focus to Make Me a Better Gamer

Flow. The fabled state of zen, where the world falls away save for the task directly in front of you. It’s a kind of euphoria-filled moment that’s so hard to attain and one you can only comprehend until after it’s over. There’s a reason competitive folk crave the flow state, and I’ve used one of the few gadgets that claim to actually help you get there—by literally using your brain. The issue is how we can even measure “flow.” How do we know when we’re well and truly focused? It’s an issue the EEG technology company Neurable has been ironing out with a gaming headset developed alongside HP’s HyperX PC gaming brand. In its current iteration, the technology is clearly geared toward e-sports players or pro-level wannabes. Big picture, though, we may be on the brink of discovering yet another data point to add to the heap of health metrics we already track: your brain’s approximated level of focus. Essentially, the special earcups inside the HyperX Neurable headset contain a miniaturized set of electroencephalography sensors. This type of technology is normally built into a full cranium-spanning device full of small metal electrodes made to measure the minute electrical charges that sp