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Pair of Brainwave-Tracking Earbuds Making Waves at CES

By Deborah Borfitz

January 8, 2026 | In just a few years, the monitoring of brain signals via ubiquitous earbuds will be as common as heart rhythm tracking by popular smartwatch brands like Apple and Fitbit. People wearing these next-generation earbuds will have their electroencephalogram (EEG) effortlessly analyzed while they listen to music or make phone calls, predicts Mathieu Letombe, an independent board member and advisor for Paris-based Naox Technologies.

At this week’s CES 2026 in Las Vegas, the company announced that Naox Link, the world’s first in-ear EEG system designed for healthcare professionals, recently received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance. In tandem, it unveiled Naox Wave, the futuristic consumer device and EEG platform designed for non-diagnostic brain-signal tracking in everyday devices.

The attention-grabbing consumer earbuds and technology architecture can integrate into any wireless stereo earbuds, enabling partnering original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to add real brain-signal sensing to devices people already wear every day, says Letombe, the former CEO of smart health device pioneer Withings. Ultimately, the in-ear EEG technology could be used by millions of people to better understand and manage their neurological health, including conditions such as epilepsy, sleep apnea, and Alzheimer’s disease.

But, as with smartwatches, the starting point is simple wellness tracking based on brain-signal data captured during everyday activities such as working, relaxing, and sleeping, he says. These signals get processed in the Naox Wave app to generate insights about mental health, sleep, and cognitive performance.

App users are presented with visual summaries based on specific EEG biomarkers to estimate vigilance, focus, relaxation, and brain aging. Based on the results, they might then use a meditation or brain-training app to boost their cognitive skills and practice mindfulness to reduce stress and anxiety, Letombe says.

Naox Wave and the first consumer devices incorporating its non-diagnostic brain-signal tracking technology, are expected to begin rolling out toward the end of 2026. Once it is a mass-market technology, it will evolve based on the work being done in parallel with the FDA-approved Link device. A decade from now, if artificial intelligence (AI) is applied to a large and anonymized database of EEG signals, the medical- and consumer-grade EEG devices may well have comparable capabilities, says Letombe.

Several popular smartwatches are now FDA-cleared for their electrocardiogram (ECG) features, allowing them to screen for conditions like atrial fibrillation, he notes. As with these devices, the Naox Link system is not imagined as a replacement for existing technology or medical diagnosis by a healthcare professional. “We want to do better at screening people who could benefit from a [traditional] EEG.”

The Link medical device uses a wired pair of earbuds with soft, biocompatible electrodes placed on the ear tips. EEG data gets transmitted to a medical professional via a HIPAA-certified cloud.

Clinical use cases for Naox Link currently being investigated with partners in the U.S. include pediatric epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease, Letombe says. Other studies underway are focused more on easing the logistical challenges of getting an in-office EEG by shipping the earbud version to patients for screening ahead of their appointment with a neurologist.

Differentiating Features

Many people still confuse the terms EEG and ECG because they are similar acronyms for non-invasive tests using electrodes, but they measure fundamentally different organs and conditions, Letombe says. EEGs focus on activity in the brain—arguably the most important organ in the human body.

Unlike an ECG, it is impossible to do an EEG using a smartwatch because it sits too far from the brain to pick up the electric signals it generates. Those signals are roughly 1,000 times smaller than heart signals, he says, so the recording device needs to be near the brain. The raw data also needs specialized analysis.

Relative to the new-to-market Noax Link device, existing ambulatory EEG options are quite cumbersome since they all involve placing electrodes on the scalp, which often cause discomfort and can loosen during sleep, says Letombe. Technicians end up spending a lot of time trying to keep patients properly connected to obtain decent signals.

But ambulatory EEGs can capture brain activity in people’s natural environment over longer periods, helping to diagnose intermittent issues like epilepsy or seizures that standard 20-minute EEGs can easily miss, he stresses. The “form factor” of the specialty in-ear EEG device is its key differentiating feature, making it simple to use and extremely patient-friendly. “We believe that patients shouldn’t be treated differently than consumers.”

The ear tips are made from silicon and coated with conductive silver ink to act as dry-contact electrodes that interface with the skin inside the ear canal. Among the benefits of the in-ear design element is that people can easily do the setup themselves. A natural-feeling pinch lets people know the electrodes are in good contact within the ear canal, says Letombe.

Clinical Need

Naox Link was FDA-cleared based on its performance relative to the two electrodes (T7 and T8) in an EEG that are placed over the left and right temporal lobes of the brain nearest to the ear canal, says Letombe. These are part of the longer-term in-hospital method involving the placement of roughly 20 electrodes glued across the scalp where both the sticky paste and need to stay still for many hours cause patients considerable physical discomfort.

The earbud-based medical device was nearly a decade in the making, he points out. Naox Technologies was born out of lab work company founders Hugo Dinh (CEO) and his mentor, neuroscientist Michel Le Van Quyen (CSO), did at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research. Le Van Quyen was frustrated at the lack of a wearable for identifying neurological conditions as was already happening with smartwatches for monitoring heart health.

Neurologists were hungry for EEG data captured outside of hospitals, in part due to the lengthy time delay in diagnosing conditions like epilepsy (an average 19 months in the U.S.), Letombe says. The diagnosis is confirmed by the occurrence of two seizures that aren’t apt to happen within 20 minutes at the hospital or outpatient lab. Another issue is that epilepsy is strongly linked to numerous other chronic conditions that need to be treated and “there is a low chance you will get the right medication at the beginning because everyone is different,” he adds.

Older individuals needing to be assessed for conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s may also have a hard time accessing a hospital with an EEG technologist, continues Letombe. And that is not to mention the many people affected by mental health issues and chronic sleep disorders where it makes sense to do brain monitoring. Two to three billion people worldwide would benefit from brain recording technology.

Development of the in-ear EEG technology began in 2015 when the focus was on using statistical and AI approaches with brain signals to detect signs of epileptic seizures. This highlighted the need for continuous, long-duration brain monitoring that traditional scalp EEG methods could not easily provide. Naox Technologies was launched in 2018 to further develop a portable, medical-grade in-ear EEG device that could be used in home settings but would have the backing of scientists and neurologists.

Two years later, the company secured venture capital funding from French investors to launch clinical trials for epilepsy and advance their miniaturized EEG sensor technology, Letombe reports. For the past two years, it has been conducting studies to evaluate the signal quality of the in-ear device against gold-standard scalp EEG equipment.

Regulatory Matters

FDA clearance required three studies, including human factors testing, to ensure intended users would be able to follow instructions for using the device without outside assistance. Another two clinical studies were done to demonstrate it Naox Link could recall epileptic spikes and seizures from patients with epilepsy and to identify different sleep stages, including the three non-rapid eye movement stages known as N1, N2, and N3 as well as REM sleep.

Additionally, the company was able to confirm that the dozens of signals from hundreds of patients were understood by neurologists presented with the data. While the device is not cleared to identify seizures or sleep stages, it provides the signals required by medical specialists to do so, Letombe says.

FDA clearance was the first regulatory goal, since the U.S. represents the biggest market for Naox Link, he says. But the next step is to get the CE mark in Europe, which is expected within the next three months.

The device is already being used at three major hospitals in France on studies involving pediatric epilepsy and focal epilepsies of adult patients and epileptiform activity in patients at risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and these will now expand to the U.S. The focus on children was based on a request from the FDA, given the difficulty in diagnosing epilepsy in suffering youngsters unable to adequately describe their symptoms, Letombe says.

The Naox Link device itself is one size that fits all. But the ear tips come in four sizes ranging from extra small to large to accommodate ear canals of every dimension.

Multi-Segment Potential

Feedback to date from neurologists using the Naox Link has been uniformly positive, says Letombe, which is easy to understand. Not only are there no logistical complications, but the cost of in-ear technology is about 20 times cheaper than an in-hospital EEG and theoretically could be reused indefinitely. For hygiene and signal quality, only the eartips need to be changed when the device is being repurposed for a new user. As with any electronic device, it also needs periodic recharging.

For its intended medical applications, individuals aren’t expected to need the in-ear EEG system for more than two to four weeks, he adds. All signals worth capturing happen within that period, including times when people are sleeping, on vacation, or have just consumed a big meal or a lot of alcohol.

Many clinical conditions require brain-signal monitoring during sleep, including seizures associated with epilepsy, says Letombe. “About 30% of people with a predisposition for Alzheimer’s have seizures while they sleep and don’t know about it,” he adds.

This is in fact the subject of one ongoing research study designed to shed light on how Alzheimer’s works. There is also some preliminary evidence that anti-epileptic medicines might slow or reverse development of the disease, notes Letombe, “because if you help people avoid seizure when they’re asleep, obviously their brain is getting better.”

Naox Technologies is working with pharma companies and contract research organizations on ways to improve their clinical studies for anti-epileptic medications and other brain-targeting drugs. Although EEG monitoring can help de-risk trials, it is concerningly underutilized. Many medications are potentially seizure-causing, Letombe says.

Sponsors of decentralized trials are among the initial markets targeted for Naox Link. That could grow to include AI companies who could use all the EEG data that’s being amassed to automate and improve diagnoses of conditions like epilepsy, sleep disorders, and dementia as well as personalize treatment.

Meanwhile, Naox Technologies is working with several major commercial Bluetooth-based earbud brands to integrate the consumer-grade EEG capabilities of Wave into their product lines. This will initially be for wellness measurements such as focus, relaxation, and alertness, as well as “individual electroencephalography” as a yardstick of cognitive performance.

With Noax Link, users don’t receive any feedback other than confirmation that the signal quality is good, the battery is sufficiently charged, and they’re connected to the cloud. The neurologist on the other end reviews the EEG signals coming off the device, in some cases aided by AI in interpreting the extensive, real-world recordings.