ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Electroencephalography

Do you know what a brain is? It's the part of your body that helps you think and remember things. Electroencephalography (EEG for short) is a way of looking at what's happening in someone's brain by putting some small rectangular stickers called electrodes on their scalp.

When you hear or see something, your brain sends signals to different parts of your body to react. These signals create a tiny bit of electricity that can be detected by the electrodes on your scalp.

The EEG machine reads these electrical signals and turns them into squiggly lines on a piece of paper or a computer screen. This helps doctors and scientists understand what's happening inside your brain while you're doing different things, like sleeping or playing games.

EEG is really helpful for lots of different things, like figuring out if someone has epilepsy (a condition that makes you have seizures) or studying how the brain reacts to different stimuli. It's a bit like a superpower that helps us understand what's going on in the most important part of our bodies!