Opinion
Ask almost any EEG researcher about recording from participants with thick, curly or afro-textured hair, and you will hear the same story. Longer setup, higher impedance, noisier data, and often a quiet decision to drop electrodes, or drop the participant. It is treated as an unavoidable fact of the work. It is not.
The standard cup and disc electrode was designed around fine, straight hair that parts easily and lets the sensor sit close to the scalp. That assumption is baked into the hardware. When hair does not behave that way, the electrode cannot make contact, and no amount of gel or patience fully fixes a mechanical mismatch. The result is not a scientific limit. It is a design that was never asked to work for everyone.
The consequences are measurable. Reviews of the EEG literature find that Black participants are rarely included, and when they are, data quality is often unreported. Surveys of researchers show the large majority have hit hardware problems with textured hair. Patients have been told to come back and try a clinical EEG again, missing medical information in the meantime, for no reason other than their hair.
None of this is anyone's individual fault. It is what happens when a design assumption goes unexamined for decades. But an unexamined choice is still a choice, and choices can be remade.
That is the whole premise of Synaptive. If the electrode is the thing that fails, then the electrode is the thing to redesign, so that reliable scalp contact does not depend on the texture of a person's hair. Not a workaround, not a special protocol for certain participants, just hardware that works for the head in front of you.
We think inclusion in neuroscience will be won or lost at the level of the equipment, long before it reaches the analysis. This is where we have chosen to work.