Posted May 30, 2025 at 6:56 PM UTC

Track your mental stress… with a forehead e-tattoo?

That’s what researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are proposing in this paper published in Device. In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, co-author Nanshu Lu says it’s meant to help people in “high-stakes, high-demand” jobs monitor their stress in real-time. The e-tattoo measures brainwaves and eye movements to decode mental workloads to help prevent people in stressful jobs from reaching a breaking point.

Obviously, this is research and not an actual thing yet — but it sure does look cyberpunk.

Front on view of man staring straight forward while wearing electrodes on his forehead and face

Photo: Nanshu Lu / University of Texas Austin