ABOVE: Neurosity’s Notion headset, released in 2019, is one of a handful of consumer brain-computer interface devices that scientists are adapting for their EEG research.
STEVE GONG
Conor Russomanno hadn’t stopped wondering about the effects of the multiple concussions he’d suffered playing football and rugby at Columbia University. In 2011, less than a year after his last severe hit, he had passed a neurologist’s standardized test of cognition, but he still wasn’t himself, at least not all the time. “My mind [was] definitely different than it was before,” he says. “I was really, really amped and self-motivated and confident on certain days, and then I would hit these extreme lows on other days.”
The following year, as Russomanno was pursuing a master’s degree in design in New York City, a friend offered to sell him a MindFlex—a cutting-edge toy from Mattel that allowed users to make a ball hovering on ...
