Two-phone EEG setup detects brain readiness in basketball free throws

A team led by Miguel Contreras-Altamirano developed a highly portable system for simultaneous brain and movement recording outside the lab. The setup uses two smartphones — one for EEG acquisition via a head-mounted wireless amplifier, and another for video-based posture tracking. Testing on 26 basketball players (120 free throws each) confirmed that the readiness potential (RP), a brain signal preceding voluntary movement, could be captured reliably across fronto-central channels. The RP showed significant negative deflection at channel Cz from -400 to 0 ms before shot release, confirming the feasibility of mobile EEG in complex, dynamic scenarios.

However, the RP amplitude did not correlate with shot success (maximum explained variance 4.7%), suggesting that pre-movement brain activity alone doesn't differentiate making from missing. Exploratory offline pose analysis found participant-specific posture variations in 38.5% of players, hinting at individual strategies but with low overall variance explained (4.5%). The study demonstrates that a two-smartphone, low-cost (under $500 in consumer hardware) acquisition system is sufficient to link natural human movement with brain dynamics. This breakthrough opens doors for sports neuroscience, rehabilitation, and cognitive research in real-world conditions.