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 spell out brain activity. In the HyperX Neurable headset, a set of two EEG sensors measure a user\u2019s level of focus. Utilizing the data gathered from the brain\u2019s feint electrical signals, Neurable uses a specialized app to guide users to an optimal focus state.<\/p>\n
The actual headset isn\u2019t available yet, though HP has promised we\u2019ll know more later in the year. Even without an actual product in sight, the technology has left me wondering whether the next era of wearables will target areas beyond our wrists, fingers, and eyes. Future gadgets may try to peel the layers of our brains to gather personal data\u2014figuratively, of course\u2014to understand more about our physical or emotional state.<\/p>\n
Feeling a little uncomfortable? That\u2019s just the first morsel of this extra-large can of worms.<\/p>\n
\u201cPriming\u201d your focus ![\"Hyperx](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/HyperX-Neurable-Headset-1.jpg\")
The \u201cpriming\u201d process involves staring at a field of blue dots until they coalesce into the center of a black field. \u00a9 Kyle Barr \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve donned Neurable\u2019s prototype HyperX headset<\/a> twice, once on the ground at CES 2026<\/a> and again back in May during an HP showcase. Both times, I ran through a quick round of AimLab\u2019s shooting gallery. The app measures how fast your reaction time and accuracy are, and Neurable was utilizing it as a means to gauge users\u2019 first-person shooting abilities before and after using its tech.<\/p>\n In its current iteration, Neurable tries to help users enter a flow state by telling them to concentrate on an odd vista\u2014a digital constellation of glowing blue dots, evoking a field of stars. The dots are part of its Prime app, Neurable\u2019s homegrown software that purports to induce focus and calm by using \u201cshort-duration, high-motion visual stimulation.\u201d The more you let go of stray thoughts\u2014which Neurable measures with the EEG sensors in the HyperX\u2019s special earcups\u2014the more the dots contract toward the center of the screen. When it works (the program glitched for me on my second try, requiring a restart), it takes between 30 seconds and five minutes to enter the purported focus state, depending on your level of stress.<\/p>\n With my initial AimLabs score in mind, I \u201cprimed\u201d my brain. I let go of all thoughts\u2014essentially letting my brain become a void full of nothing but elevator music\u2014and then waited for the stars to coalesce into a single point. Going back into the same AimLab test, I found that my accuracy score was marginally better than before.<\/p>\n Was that result a mere bias stemming from extra practice? Maybe, but the stakes weren\u2019t high for my personal aim score. I know what it\u2019s like to be nervous in a competitive setting. I train in historical sword fighting on my off days, and I\u2019ve attended longsword tournaments in the past. I learned years ago that I perform better when I stop obsessing about doing well. In these situations, I effectively \u201cprime\u201d my own brain by giving myself the room to fail, shifting my expectations from winning to simply focusing on looking good as I flash a length of steel in the air.<\/p>\n Neurable\u2019s \u201cpriming\u201d process is built to similarly relinquish all extraneous thoughts. Alicia Howell-Munson, a research scientist working at Neurable, told me in a video chat that staring at the screen full of floating blue dots is supposed to decrease \u201ccognitive load,\u201d which is essentially the mass of stray thoughts that are not tied to your current task.<\/p>\n Put another way, humans have a limited amount of bandwidth to process everything that\u2019s going on in our lives. As such, you need to decrease the number of stray thoughts so your brain can access your imbued muscle memory, strengthened by years of practice.\u00a0That means that if you\u2019re already capable of popping heads on Counter-Strike, then your brain should be able to reliably refer back to its training during a stressful match rather than trying to process that awkward date you had last night.<\/p>\n The priming procedure I experienced is just the opening salvo of this specific technology. Eventually, Neurable hopes to make it more interactive and data-centric so users can reference the state of their own focus when needed. Howell-Munson said Neurable aims to develop a way for the system to \u201c[help] you remove those thoughts that are intrusive [and] then lower your cognitive load.\u201d<\/p>\n The neurotech company\u2019s ambitions go even further than that, though. Neurable\u2019s technology is still in its relative infancy, but Ramses Alcaide, the founder and CEO of Neurable, told Gizmodo that\u2014eventually\u2014the team wants to \u201coverclock\u201d the brain by taking players through tasks that help them focus. In Alcaide\u2019s telling, this would involve an objective, data-based method of gaining focus\u2014a solution that may be more appealing to analytical gamers than a round of meditation.<\/p>\n How does EEG in a headset even work? Alcaide said that one of the main challenges with scaling EEG technology is signal-to-noise issues. Namely, the signal can get disrupted if a person wearing a brain-scanning apparatus moves their head. The cure was an AI algorithm that removes any \u201cartifacts\u201d (aka unusable or corrupted data) when the sensors or the user\u2019s head shifts. Alcaide said Neurable\u2019s small-scale EEG system was \u201cequivalent\u201d to a larger, full-head machine, but recreating medical-grade technology isn\u2019t the point. Neurable only needs to gain the most cursory level of information about your current focus level for the sake of a gamer-ready headset.<\/p>\n Howell-Munson worked on the headset\u2019s brain scanning system that calibrates itself depending on the user. She said EEG was akin to holding a strong microphone to a building full of signals from every direction. The strength of the signal depends on the location of your sensors.<\/p>\n \u201cSo through different types of AI and processing, we\u2019re able to start differentiating those different signals that are coming from the different parts of the brain and at their different strengths and weeding them out to figure out which ones we\u2019re really interested in,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n Every brain is different, but Neurable\u2019s researchers claim its software manages to pick out where the \u201cfocus\u201d part of our brain signals are most likely coming from. That means each headset still requires a small calibration period, but it shouldn\u2019t demand as much waiting and a team of doctors standing behind you just to let you know if you\u2019re focused or not.<\/p>\n Whether this all works exactly as described still remains to be seen. Neurable co-founder Adam Molnar and Howell-Munson co-authored a white paper<\/a> earlier this year describing the priming process. The company tested its headset with 12 collegiate e-sports players and 13 regular gamers using AimLabs. All the participants had the chance to train until they stopped seeing perceptible improvement.<\/p>\n Overall, the semi-pros with more developed muscle memory got the most out of the \u201cpriming\u201d process. Neurable\u2019s researchers claimed the e-sports gamers were 3% more accurate in the shooting gallery tests with an overall speedier reaction time. The casual gamer didn\u2019t get as much benefit, though they were doing marginally better with better reaction time and more targets hit.<\/p>\n The science behind flow <\/p>\n While the effect of the touted \u201cflow\u201d state\u2014being wholly absorbed in a task\u2014has been observed and studied in psychology fields for years, I needed to know what other scientists thought about Neurable\u2019s work.<\/p>\n Dr. Dimitri van der Linden, a professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands who has worked on multiple studies<\/a> surrounding the brain in a \u201cflow\u201d state, told me that EEG has previously been used in research on the brain and focus levels. Van der Linden told Gizmodo via email that \u201cin principle, it is possible to use neurofeedback (via a task or things on the screen) to alter one\u2019s state. Thus, increasing focus and reducing distractions in that way seems plausible.\u201d<\/p>\n Van der Linden added that he would like to see additional studies with more control groups who did not receive any treatment with a Neurable headset. Still, he proposed EEG may still offer a way to help induce flow. It all stems from something called the \u201cdefault mode network,\u201d which is a term used for a brain that is active even when the person is at rest.<\/p>\n \u201cOne key characteristic of flow is that one is fully focused on the task at hand and is not occupied with thinking about other things (distraction),\u201d the professor said. \u201cIt is known that activity of the [DMN] is associated with daydreaming, thinking about oneself, and simulating\/anticipating future scenarios. There are some known EEG markers of DMN activity. One can assume that if DMN activity is low, one is less likely distracted by task-irrelevant thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n EEG data isn\u2019t just useful for gamers This isn\u2019t Neurable\u2019s first actual product. The company previously worked with Masters and Dyniamic\u00a0on a pair of over-ear headphones<\/a>. That device was billed more as an expensive \u201cwellness\u201d gadget that was also designed to assist with focus. The problem is a product like that doesn\u2019t provide users with metrics so they know what to do to remain focused. The HyperX Neurable headset promises to get you straight to the flow state for when you\u2019re about to jump into your next Valorant ranked match. Compared to its previous headphones, Neurable\u2019s gaming headset possibly presents a more actionable promise, one where you can see real results.<\/p>\n If this technology works as intended, its use cases could easily outstrip just gaming. Neurable has worked with the U.S. military, though Howell-Munson said they had researched how to help soldiers address cognitive health, specifically surrounding the effects that concussive blasts<\/a> from explosives can have on the brain. Alcaide said Neurable\u2019s work on the military side was a \u201cnatural extension of where the technology can go.\u201d<\/p>\n That said, we doubt soldiers will start wearing brain-sensing headsets alongside AR headsets and visors<\/a> in the near future. Neurable\u2019s ambition is to use this tech for traditional sports, not just e-sports, as well. In that case, it would become yet another way for athletes to pick apart every aspect of their health and fitness journey.<\/p>\n You likely already know somebody who bought a Whoop<\/a> or newfangled Fitbit Air<\/a> health tracker and became obsessed with their health metrics. They let their fitness apps catalog their eating habits and their sleep schedule and tune their bodies to live in an \u201coptimal\u201d way. In these scenarios, focus could become just another data point. However, once devices like the Neurable headset start collecting EEG data in an accessible format, what\u2019s to stop companies from collating other data points on their brains?<\/p>\n That\u2019s not even the most concerning question about devices that measure brain activity. What happens if advertisers get a hold of your brain data? EEG data, especially the kind of information that\u2019s broken down into actionable metrics, is yet another potential goldmine for companies to turn people into the product. What if sites use it to feed you content based less on your clicking habits and more on what they know for a fact is providing the largest dopamine hit or distracts you the most?<\/p>\n For its part, Alcaide said Neurable was processing all data on-device and was anonymizing data that it sends to the cloud for processing. The CEO emphasized that privacy was a big sticking point for the entire company.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re never going to use the technology for somebody to get marketing data off of you,\u201d he said. Of course, that doesn\u2019t mean some less academically scrupulous copycat won\u2019t come along and decide to sell cheaper headsets while making money off people\u2019s data.<\/p>\n![\"Hyperx](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/HyperX-Neurable-Headset-2.jpg\")
Neurable\u2019s earcups contain a specialized EEG sensor that works solely around users\u2019 ears. \u00a9 Kyle Barr \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n![\"Hyperx](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/HyperX-Neurable-Headset-5.jpg\")
Neurable has touted how EEG technology could one day be used to control games, but we\u2019re still a long way away from real \u201cbrain games.\u201d \u00a9 Kyle Barr \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n![\"Hyperx](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/HyperX-Neurable-Headset-4.jpg\")
You\u2019d need to use a headset like this long-term to find if it\u2019s actually helping you game better. \u00a9 Kyle Barr \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n![\"Hyperx](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/HyperX-Neurable-Headset-6.jpg\")
Neurable wants to make the \u201cpriming\u201d process more interactive, though we still don\u2019t know what that looks like. \u00a9 Kyle Barr \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n