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Scientists Develop Device to Tell You When Your Brain Is Full
The e-tattoo technology is the first fully wireless EEG
My job, my real job I mean, as a clinical researcher is complex. It’s cognitively challenging; there are multiple studies to keep track of, grants and papers to write, a large group of mentees and trainees and staff in the lab to manage. It’s emotionally stressful too — recently more than ever in fact. But if I’m tired, or I ate a bad burrito for lunch, or I get some bad news on a personal level, it’s not a crisis. I’m not making life-or-death decisions in a split second. I can take a break, gather myself, prioritize, come back when I’m feeling better.
Not every job has that luxury. A surgeon doesn’t get to take a break in the middle of an operation if they feel like they are not at 100%. An air traffic controller can’t walk away from ensuring planes land safely because their kid woke them up in the middle of the night. These jobs and others like them have a unique challenge — a constant cognitive workload in a high-stakes environment. And the problem with constant cognitive work, is that your brain can’t do it all the time. If you force it to, you start to make mistakes. You can literally get tired of thinking.
Think of how the world might change if we knew exactly how overloaded our cognitive…