Phase 1

First contact

Hear a neuron and see your own alpha rhythm before any theory.

Pick one project and build it. The point of this phase is a specific memory, the sound of action potentials on a speaker or a bump appearing at 10 Hz when you close your eyes, that every later explanation can attach to.

Choose one project. If you have a cockroach and a curiosity about sound, build the SpikerBox. If you want to see your own brain, build one channel of EEG. If you want a fast win that moves something, do muscle to motion. If you have no parts yet, the zero-dollar path loads real EEG from the internet and everything you learn transfers.

Do not read the explainers first. Build, and while the thing is running, notice what is strange about it: the hum you did not ask for, the way the trace jumps when you blink, the fact that the signal is a hundred times smaller than you expected. Then read the explainer that names the strange thing. That order is the whole design of this site.

Skills you pick up here without meaning to

Soldering and breadboarding. Reading a multimeter. Reading the first two pages of a datasheet. Plotting in Python. Writing a build log that another person could follow. Sending an email to a professor that gets a reply.

Threads to start now, not later

Cold email five labs this month. Do the CITI human-subjects training before anyone asks you to. Join or found the NeurotechX club. Book the machine shop certification. Each of these takes an hour and compounds for four years.

Projects

Choose one. Do a second if hooked.

Project

Project A: The SpikerBox

Hear action potentials from a cockroach leg on a speaker, with an amplifier you built for about twenty dollars. The hello-world of neural engineering.

One afternoonAbout $25 in partsTier 1 Project

Project B: One channel of you

Alpha EEG from one instrumentation amplifier, a driven-right-leg circuit, and gold cup electrodes. Close your eyes and a bump appears at 10 Hz. Open them and it vanishes.

Two eveningsAbout $80 in parts, most reusableTier 1 Project

Project C: Muscle to motion

Forearm EMG drives a servo, a game, or a cursor. The fastest reliable "control something with your nervous system" you can build.

One eveningAbout $40 in partsTier 1 Project

Project D: Eyes as a joystick

Electrooculography. Two electrodes beside the eyes, a near-DC amplifier, and a cursor that follows your gaze. Weirdly simple, and the first step of an assistive speller.

One eveningAbout $40, reusing Project B partsTier 1 Project

Project E: The zero-dollar version

Real EEG from 109 people, downloaded free, opened in Python. Find alpha, find a blink, find the heartbeat leaking in. Everything in Phase 1 without buying a part.

One evening$0Tier 0

Explainers

Theory that attaches to what you just built. Read after doing.

Explainer

What was that sound?

The action potential as a story about ions and a leaky bucket, and why the click you heard is a hundred times smaller than the voltage swing inside the cell.

12 min Explainer

Why so small?

Microvolts, gain, and why the amplifier measured a difference between two electrodes instead of one electrode against ground. And the reason for the third electrode.

14 min Explainer

Why the hum?

Where 60 Hz comes from, how it gets into you, why a notch filter is the wrong first answer, and the ordered list of things that actually fix it.

10 min Explainer

What the spectrum did

The plotter turned a wiggling line into a plot with a bump at 10 Hz. Here is what a spectrum is, why it can see alpha when your eye cannot, and the two things it trades away.

14 min Explainer

Alpha and the back of the head

What the 10 Hz bump is, why it lives over visual cortex, why closing your eyes makes it and opening them breaks it, and why it is the first sanity check of every EEG setup on earth.

10 min Explainer

The artifact bestiary

A field guide to everything on an EEG trace that did not come from the brain. Blinks, eye movements, jaw, heart, sweat, pops, hum. How each looks, where it lives, and how to stop it at the source.

12 min

Skills

Hand skills and software skills picked up along the way.

Skill

Soldering, breadboards, and the multimeter

The three hand skills Phase 1 needs, taught the way a lab would teach them in an hour, plus the mistakes that cost the most time.

1 hour of practice Skill

Python for signals

The dozen lines of NumPy, Matplotlib, and SciPy you need to load a recording, plot it properly, filter it, and see its spectrum. Plus enough Git to not lose your work.

1 hour

Tools

Pages that do something.

Tool

Tool: The Web Serial plotter

Plug an Arduino-class board into this page and see your signal live, with a spectrum, and record it to CSV. Or run the demo without hardware to learn the tool first.

15 min to set up

Ready for Phase 2 when

Checks save on this device

I have heard action potentials, or seen my own alpha, or both, with something I built or on real data I processed myself.
I can explain to a friend why an EEG needs a third electrode.
I can explain why battery power is not optional when electrodes touch skin.
I have one saved plot with axes labelled, and a build log describing what went wrong.
I have sent at least three specific emails to labs and finished CITI training.

What an interviewer would ask

If you can answer these, you are done here

Your single-channel EEG shows a huge 60 Hz peak. Walk me through what you would check, in order.
Why is alpha strongest over the back of the head, and why does it disappear when the eyes open?
What does an instrumentation amplifier do that an ordinary op-amp does not?