The science fueling Axite

Welcome to the science behind Axite, your personal NeuroJournal for understanding and tracking your brain health in the context of your daily life. We've developed a revolutionary approach that combines the power of your smartphone with accessible brain measurement (EEG) to provide continuous, real-world insights into your cognitive functioning.

Unlocking Your Brain's Narrative

Imagine your smartphone as a detailed log of your interactions with the world. Every tap, scroll, and swipe on the touchscreen is a discrete behavioral event that reflects underlying neural processing. In fact, smartphones have become a ubiquitous source of complex visual information, largely driven by these very touchscreen interactions.

At Axite, we leverage this rich stream of real-world behavioral data by synchronizing it with direct measurements of your brain activity using user-friendly EEG headsets designed for at-home use. Our EEG headset allows for a quick, 5-minute setup in the comfort of your home, eliminating the need for time-consuming clinic visits.

The key to our NeuroJournal lies in the ability to time-lock EEG signals to these precise smartphone interaction events, captured at millisecond resolution. This allows us to analyze the brain activity associated with your real-world behaviors using well-established neuroscientific frameworks. By comparing your brain activity against our biomarkers database of healthy cognitive functions, we offer continuous monitoring of your cognition through our intuitive app or software license.

Deciphering Brain Signals in the Real World

Our approach is built on decades of research in how the brain activity captured via EEG processes behavior. Below are some of the key ideas behind how it works.

Click here if you're curious and want to explore the details.

1. Your brain consists of billions of neurons. Neurons activate rhythmically at specific frequencies (for example, once every second).

2. When a group of neurons activate together, this activity is amplified and it becomes measurable all the way up through the skull—and we can measure this activity using EEG. The rhythmic activity is called brain waves.

3. We group brain waves into five main categories bands: delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma. Each of these waves fluctuates depending on your behaviors. For example, when you're sleeping, your brain is mostly active in the delta range.

4. When you’re actively tapping on your smartphone, you engage a cognitive function—like using your memory when tapping. The brain waves associated with these cognitive functions are altered and we can measure these. So, if you're highly focused, this can be reflected in your alpha waves.

5. These changes in brain wave activity happen naturally throughout the day.
   Axite uses these patterns as the foundation of our algorithms, adapting to your mental state in real time.

How Axite Works 101:

Explore the Science Further

Axite analyzes your brain’s electrical activity in real time, particularly around smartphone interactions. By measuring event-related (spectral) potentials — patterns of brain activity that can be triggered by (touch) events — we can extract signals linked to various cognitive states.

Our algorithms are built on well-established EEG research and further refined through our own research, specifically designed to explore how these neural signals behave in the context of everyday smartphone use.

Here are some of the types of features we look at:

• Attention is a broad construct that includes saliency, goal-directed actions, and mind-wandering. These states often show up in specific EEG bands—especially alpha, beta, and frontal theta. In smartphone use, these waves typically involve sensorimotor and frontal brain areas.
  
  

• Sleepiness can be inferred from slow-wave activity in the delta and theta ranges. These waves, typically linked to NREM sleep, also appear during wakefulness under sleep pressure. In smartphone contexts, we often observe these slow waves in frontal regions, which are heavily engaged during interaction.
  
  

• Cognitive load is also bread but is generally believed to increase in response to high task demands. Cognitive load has been associated with increased frontal theta activity. Other markers include the P300 component and, in some cases, frontal delta increases during high-demand periods.
  
  

• We also consider non-rhythmic neural activity, including scale-free (1/f) dynamics—often referred to as pink noise. These provide a general index of brain “intactness” or overall functional state.
  
  

• Beyond ongoing oscillations, we examine event-related potentials (ERPs) tied to smartphone touches. For instance, motor preparation signals (like the Bereitschaftspotential) can be detected already 1000 ms before a touch on the smartphone, while post-touch activity (around 300 ms) in central-parietal regions reflects information consolidation.

By continuously monitoring brain activity, Axite builds a personal baseline of how your brain typically functions. This allows us to detect even subtle shifts—in attention, fatigue, or cognitive performance—often before you’re consciously aware of them.

But the story doesn’t end there. The brain is highly individual and naturally variable—features like slow-wave activity can differ significantly with age and other personal factors. To account for this, we draw on a large EEG database collected during real-world smartphone use.

This dataset includes over 500 hours of recordings from ~150 participants, ranging in age from 18 to 90 years old. We use this data to build feature distributions and train our algorithms to recognize when something falls outside the expected range—helping us detect anomalies more accurately and personally.