Disclosure is directed to commanding a content receiver by interpreting brainwave patterns that are captured from a user of the content receiver. The user's brainwave patterns may be captured by the use of a headset having a plurality of sensors that are disposed at various locations in proximity to the user's head. The content receiver may be operable to learn to recognize specific brainwave patterns for individual users. The content receiver may recognize a number of specific brainwave patterns for each user, each specific brainwave pattern corresponding to a specific command that is executable by the content receiver. When executing user commands, the content receiver may process an input stream from the headset and compare portions of the input stream to the recognized brainwave patterns in order to extract commands from the input stream. Following this, the extracted commands may be executed by the content receiver.