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Science

Controlling Your Computer with Your Brain 79

Posted by Hemos from the not-sure-how-to-title-this dept.
The B1FFMaN sent this article in - I'm not sure how to title it. It's /not/ about your computer controlling your brain or anything. What it is about is some interesting research that has gone on into detection of brain activity, and interpretation of that. So, that could mean sitting in front of your machine and thinking what you wanted to type, or open, or whatever - it could also mean that people stricken with certain types of paralysis could use computers more easily.
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Controlling Your Computer with Your Brain More

Controlling Your Computer with Your Brain

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  • So what happens if you have a brain fart?

    "You already have zero privacy -- get over it,"
    Scott McNealy
    CEO, Sun Microsystems
  • Cyberlink is just a mouse. Face muscle controlled -- that's it. Since I have an RSI I've considered buying cyberlink: it makes no sense for real job. Ever tried to do anything useful with no-hands footmouse [footmouse.com]? I have one. It's good for totally disabled people to read their email, but totally useless if you want to throw in a perl script. Just try to install on-screen keyboard emulator and poke it with conventional mouse and dont' forget that all ergo mouse substitutes are slower than your standard mouse.

    What we really need is cyberlink-like system which does enter text -- may be chordal "brainfingers" could do the trick, may be something else, but cyberlink is aimed at totally disabled, not injured who want to stay afloat so we won't see it anytime soon...

  • > This smells alot like a big brother plan to me, but theoretically, if you can control your computer, couldn't your computer control you?

    Not necessarily. At this moment you are controlling your computer with your hands, does that mean your computer can control your hands?

    If something like this becomes possible, there is one more thing to think about... us normal 'joe public' people are discovering this sort of technology now, but the Government angencies and the like will have probably being researching this technology for years, going on to develop the mind control aspect and may already be using it on the unsuspecting population. This probably goes on to explain the popularity of McDonalds, Nike, and (ugh!) M$. 'cept that the M$ hating slashdotters (not generalising here ;) ) will be immune to this.. so rest easily!

    Boy am I paranoid!!!!

    Someone let me know when PGPDisk - Brain drain edition comes out, or (better still) the linux-encryption-brain-patch.. :)
  • Everyone says, "Possibilities for the handicapped" and "No more carpal tunnel."

    But, be honest, aren't we all thinking, "No more reaching back behind my couch for the remote"

  • Error #305 Segmentation fault detected in user.
    User needs more caffine.

  • Like anyone believes the technological advances will stop here. Only a few steps away, these techniques will be a lot faster and more accurate.

    What I'm worried about is the removal of physical action between thought and effect. One of the best protections we have as humans is that we need to decide to physically act to express a thought - it's a clear division between thought and action. This sort of thing blurs that distinction. How many of us have had urges that would be illegal if not for the fact that we didn't actually physically do it? And if we were hooked up to a device that would act on these thoughts, then it brings up all sorts of messy issues. Legislating thought among them.

    So what is really the difference between a thought followed by the action, and thought by itself? How would a device distinguish between the two if you weren't actually going through the physical motions? The instant you stop making the action itself a requirement, there isn't much of a difference between the thoughts you would act on and the thoughts you wouldn't.

    tunesmith

  • I am very interested in this, and I have followed the link, but there is no other information. My dad has an illness called Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. It is commonly refered to as Lou Gherig's, or ALS. It is the same thing that plaques Steven Hawkin. He is at the state were he is barely able to move, or talk at all. He has the ability to use a mouse, although he is very slow. With an on screen keyboard he is able to type, but on a good day can only get about three words per minute. He is barely able to do anything because of this. His friends are unable to understand him when he speaks. He is not even able to chat because he types to slowly, and other chatters basicly ignore him. If he were able to use his mind to control the computer, rather than a physical means he would be able to do an incredable amount more than he can now. With a laptop he would be able to control his electric wheel chair without use of the cumbersome joy stick. He would be able to talk in real time through speech synth. Those two things would mean the world to him. Transportation, and being able to speak. If anyone knows were I might be able to find more information on this subject please contact me. I am extremely interested in getting my dad into any test programs that may be going on. You can email me at angel@myrealbox.com Thanks
  • First, I totally agree with you that this isn't necessarily the fastest way to communicate. Opening my mouth and talking is much faster. Eye movements are really easy to detect and ok to track. *But*, if you are completely locked-in (not even any eye movement left), how are you going to communicate with anybody??? And even if you have eye movements left, do you really want to use them for *everything*?

    Previously, in 1988 there was work on P300-based control (check out Farwell and Donchin's work). They got about 2.3 characters/min (0.2 bits/sec). Hideously slow!!!

    It does looks like you need to check out the recent advances in signal processing. Currently, we do single trial recognition (after *mucho* signal processing) with about 85% accuracy today. Also, Scott Makeig's group at the Salk Institute gets around 80%.

    Single trial P300 detection is hard, but not impossible.

  • No I think that this kind of thing is both dangerous and immoral. God has created a world which we perceive through our own five senses, and for us to tamper with our perception of reality in this way can only lead to a disaster for the human race. Remember, how can you trust the system supplying you with information

    Jesus turned ordinary water into the "best vintage of wine" as his FIRST miracle. He didn't apparently share your feeling about tampering with god-given perceptions. Do you allow doctors to use their "strange technology" to cure you when you're ill? How can you be sure that God DOESN'T want you to die from pnuemonia?

    That being said, I agree with you about not trusting information sources. In an "open sourced" world it will be much harder for any individual or government to get their views over on anyone willing to LOOK FOR THEMSELVES. Those who choose to bury their heads in the sand do it already without the need of a portable, thought-activated "wetware" computer. They do just fine with their tv at home.


    -The Reverend
  • This kind of technology may not be able to control our minds (yet), but in order to be useful, they must be able to read our minds.

    Think of the possibilities.

    They'll start small and limited: e.g., mind readers at airport checkpoints to detect people thinking about bombs or hijackings.

    Then they'll be used for more controversial uses. e.g., scan your mind for violent patterns of thought before you can buy a gun. Or to see if you're a "potential" pedophile (by showing you pictures of kids at the swimming pool while reading your thoughts) before you get get a job as a teacher or daycare worker.

    Then uses for mind readers will go overboard. Periodic or random mind scanning. The devices will become judge, jury, and if necessary, executioner. Why do we need a legal system when the device can tell us with 100% certainty what happened? And we all want to live in a "safe" socirty, right?

    Tech like this scares the crap out of me. Perhaps it's because you all think I fear what the device will read in my mind. Think harder about the larger issues. The scariest part is that the tech will someday be able to read minds, or worse, someday be able to reprogram minds. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

  • Now that is an interesting thought:
    ...a world which we perceive through our own five senses, and for us to tamper with our perception of reality in this way can only lead to a disaster for the human race. Remember, how can you trust the system supplying you with information?

    The real question is how you're so confident you can trust your own five senses? Sure the data you get is raw and uncontaminated, but before you can even think consciously and intelligibly about thoses inputs, they have already been processed and interpreted by your brain; and your brain, being a product of the social and environmental conditioning, is already warping and distorting the input in ways you are not aware of. Prejudices, instinct, favoritism, fears, etc. None of those are inherent in any input of the senses, but are deeply associated with many sights, scents, images, etc. because our brain creates these realities.

    The problem is that people are already brainwashed and don't realize it. A lot of problems may vanish if we realize that we are brainwashed and held captive by our innate sense of reality, which is non-connected to the outer reality which surrounds us.

    -AS
  • My vote would be to dust of the NeXT OS and use it to implament the BIC hardware/software.
  • * No way dude, technology couldn't be immoral in itself, it's only about the use we make of it. Moral is an extremely vague concept, almost every person create its own private moral starting on the basis given by the society in which he lives: even among you believers there's not one and only moral besides a few key points (which are shared even by most non-believers, including me).
    * The small step you're talking about "writing" into brain from a computer doesn't seem so small to me, because one thing is doing a fuzzy match on patterns concerning millions of neurons at a time (like the article says), another thing is putting sensorial data properly into small amounts of neurons at a time, which is what you seem to fear about... you've been too scared watching the Matrix, aren't you?
    * We've been tampering a lot with our perceptions with psychedelic drugs and the like, so it's not anything new, and I have to say this looks a lot less dangerous than LSD...
    * Even today, how can you trust the information you receive by traditional mediums? Are you saying that you trust without doubts any info from TV or newspapers or the net? Would be that a difference if the info comes to you by direct senses stimulation rather than words or images?
    * Lastly, have you even read the article? Well, the last paragraph says clearly that this thing will be pratical only for paralized people, and to quote the original:
    "Anything you can do with your brain can be done a lot faster, cheaper and easier with a finger and a remote control."

    --
    "The crux of the biscuit is the Apostrophe(*)" - FZ
  • Ok, using this BCI technology is a big step toward the Star Trek type future. Sight, sound, and touch would be great on the internet. This would bring businesses meetings online into a whole new era. But do we really need taste and smell? No offence to anyone here, but I don't want to smell or taste any of you.
  • I heard about this on TV a year or so ago. It was on either PBS or Discovery. It was a whole show on the subject of mind over matter. In addition to convering some of the more quacky things (projecting images onto photographic plates via mental enegery), it also covered the detection of brain activity and using it to control things.

    The two example that stick out in my mind were the following. First, they had a flight silumator machine (for the Navy or USAF) being controlled by a pilot using only thought. Apparently, it was a bit cumbersome. Second, a man had rigged his sailboat so he could steer by thought. They actually showed it in action. His thoughts were detected and transduced into motor movement controlling the steering wheel of the rather large sailboat. Pretty neat.

    The thing I remember most, though, was that they're weren't really 'READING MINDS'. Instead, they could pick out differing activities of the brain. It wasn't about thinking LEFT or RIGHT, but more about thinking HOT and 2+2. In other words, because the thoughts took place in vastly different parts of the brain, detectors attached to the head could distinguigh between these thoughts. These thoughts could thenbe mapped into other things in the physical world.

    Not quit mind reading, but still pretty darn cool!

  • Scientists have been using children as test subjects in seeing how well humans can control their own brainwaves, and using them to trigger computer events. They would set the kid up with some nifty electrodes on his or her head and a game would run where the child would see a dolphin swimming on the screen and they would have to try to use their mind to keep the dolphin above the waterline. Their score would increase depending on how long they kept the dolphin up. I can't say I remember what the results where, but check www.discovery.com and see if they have anything.

  • People have been measuring P300 for years - actually at least 20 years. Good luck if you try to get more than 0.1bit/sec output rate through it.

    There were great hopes for P300 some years ago. People thought one can diagnose almost every neural disorder with it. The problem turned out to be that it correlates with _too many_ things. And it's noisy.

    In general, one can't measure a single P300 wave. Instead, 100 or so "epochs" of data, each time locked to a stimulus, must be averaged to get a good signal. For information transmission even more is needed, because the wave is affected only slightly by attention (or everything else, for that matter).

    There are more promising computer interfaces around, such as eye movement detection, or simply speech. Direct connection with a practical bit rate (in the information-theoretic sense) is just a day dream right now.

  • I think many /. posters either didn't read the article or didn't quite grasp it. This has nothing to do with reading minds, its just a clever use of the frequency following response. If you watch a 10-hz light or listen to 10-hz binaural beats your mind's electrical activity tends to match the signal.

    With practice you can get better and faster syncronization, as seen since the 60's with Light/Sound machines or Cranial Electro Stimunators and an EEG. Though these devices are used to train people to get into relaxing or stimulating mind states its still the same technology. Not even half as interesting as that IBM quantum interface posted last week.

    If anyone wants to play with binaural beats, this [bwgen.com] is a nice shareware generator.
  • after RSI, people often switch to voice recognition and tend to get voice strain (http://ii2.ai.iit.nrc.ca/VoiceCode/voiceStrain.ht ml).

    can't wait to switch to directly using my brain...

  • A few years later we'll see a behind the scenes documentary about these kids being treated for trauma because they weren't 'smart' enough to keep a dolphin from drowning.

  • Here's another link to similiar research. This guy has actually implanted transceivers, and he is planning on more--digital record and playback of nerve signals. http://www.wired.com/wired/arc hive/8.02/warwick.html [wired.com]
  • Good! I'm not the only one to think about the Shadowrun angle of this. People used to say that Data Jack's would never, ever become real. Well it looks like we're taking baby steps in that direction. If they ever do come out with them I will get one. After I see that the first few people live. Oh God, lets hope Micro$oft isn't the maker. The last thing I'd need is a "Fatal Error in Greymatter.sys"

  • One problem: I can move my fingers faster than I can type. Far faster, in fact; well in excess of what would be 100+ wpm, and with modest accuracy. Try ramping up your typing speed past your maximum. Your fingers don't slow down, you just aren't able to form the words quickly enough, and with enough control, to type. This implies that the problem -- to the extent that there is a problem -- is located in the brain, not the peripheral nerves.

    -jcl

  • Re:A different approach--motor neurons (Score:3)

    by James Lanfear ( 34124 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @05:50PM (#1092500)
    Did somebody call for a cynic?

    Quite likely, there are motor neurons in us which have no function.

    Yes, and they're called 'dead neurons'. Neurons are eliminated (or rather, commit suicide) when they aren't used -- there's no reason to invest the resources needed to support them if they aren't doing anything. The only way to do this would be to reallocate neurons, which is certainly possible, in theory (the brain does it all the time), and accept the results. The problem is that if you choose a body part that is used for anything you run the risk that it will happily take back your interface neurons (which the brain also does all the time). Neural Darwinism in action.

    Assuming you could do it, though, you still can't just use one neuron, or a small set. The dexterity needed to type requires lots of neurons. Neurons that your toe simply doesn't have. If you can't already type with your pinky-toes, don't expect to be able to just because you have a neural interface instead of a foot on one end of the nerve fibers.

    AFAICT, the bottleneck on typing isn't finger speed, anyway; it's processing speed. I can make typing motions with my fingers a helluva lot faster that I can type, because I can't keep up with what it is that my fingers are doing.

    Finally, while I'm doing my rain dance, reading brain waves -- by which I assume you mean all non-invasive technologies -- has already been demonstrated to work (poorly) as an interface. It's also non-invasive, meaning far less risk, and can be scaled down to work with small numbers of neurons.

    -jcl

  • Looks like our 'trode net might come into being after all.
  • Seems to me the crowd proclaiming Quake's causing murders might have more of a case when they people playing the game are actually controlling their character through direct murderous thoughts directed at other people.
    -----
  • /me thinks, "hmmm... some coffee would be good right about now"

    now how long til I can set this machine up to interpret that thought! aghhh!


    javajawa# sleep

  • Ugh, horrible (Score:5)

    by Camelot ( 17116 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @04:12AM (#1092504)
    Warning - unabashed katzbashing ahead

    Just think of the future implications: what if you get paralyzed by watching another round of thoughtless, contentless drivel by Jon Katz ? Then, you sit in front of the monitor, unable to move, your mouth drooping, hands limp at your sides - and all you can think of is "Katz". This is all Katz' fault. Now, the device interprets your thoughts, deciding that you want more of Katz - and brings dozens of browser windows into the foreground, each one displaying a different Katz article. Can you imagine the torment ? You try to scream, but no sounds can be produced..

    Just horrible.

  • Big problem with this (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'd have a big problem with this is my computer had it.

    My browser would keep opening up to pr0n sites.

    Kind of embarrasing when you're trying to do a demo.
  • Ah ha! No more physical activity at all. I can finally completely veg out in front of my computer instead of having to actually move a mouse or my keyboard. This is a major revolution. Cool. Unreal tournament will never be the same. Rock on. What OS will it use first (When it is finally developed)?
  • Yeah, and then think about how it will be when they introduce "force feedback mind controller devices" FFMCD(tm)... Feel that railgun in your brains!!! ;)
  • It's funny to see how life is starting to immitate fiction. Next thing you know, we'll be surfin' the net without any boxes in front of us. Instead we'll just think about the topic we want and we're there. God...I wonder if I'll still have to pay my ISP?
  • Just think "open photoshop" and automagically photoshop opens... No more fiddeling around with the start-menu/program/adobe/photoshop4/blablabla...

    Or... I could of course place a link on the desktop... ;)

    But isn't reading the electric impulses from the brain almost the same concept as speech recognition? You compare the signal results with previous results, and perform the action linked to the most similar result in the database?

    Would probably be nice in Q3A too... :)
  • I actually mentioned this article in a reply to the "Interfaces for the handicapped" post, but no-one seem to think it was cool (ie, moderate it up).

    Wah.

    That is all.

    Pete

  • Hmmmm... (Score:3)

    by zpengo ( 99887 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @04:13AM (#1092511) Homepage
    I was thinking about this just the either night, actually. What would life be like if we had a "direct computer interface"?

    Computers are basically an easy way to do things that are hard with our default hardware. Spreadsheets are easy to grasp conceptually, but hard to do on paper. Word processing is not a strange concept, it's just that there's never been a way to implement it before.

    A direct computer interface would break down the barriers even more. Wouldn't it be nice to have an address book you could access just by wanting it? All of a sudden, "mental note" would no longer be just a catch phrase.

    Need directions? Browse to mapquest and look at a map, without ever taking your eyes of the road.

    Waiting in the doctor's office? Well isn't it lucky that you just installed Quake 7?

  • I can appreciate the desire to control a computer with mere thought alone. However, I also envision the script-kiddiez figuring out some way to induce the Gibson-esqe Black IC effect, leading to a "Script-kiddiez suc....BWAZZZZZAAAAAP *thunk*" situation. Seriously, some of them are already too close to the edge of murder, and the only thing keeping them from it is the inbuilt need to never leave thier bawx unless they have to eat, dump, or go to school . If they're able to do it from thier terminal, it'll make a smurfing seem like a field-day.
  • Now if there only was a feedback-mechanism, then I could start using 'Cleansweep' to clean my dirty mind! ;)
    How to make a sig
    without having an idea
  • Well, there could be some kind of parental tweak so that the kids would only be able to kill by thinking happy, lovely thoughts.

    Gah...shades of a clockwork orange...

  • Often based on eye movements or the electric
    potentials in the vicinity of the eye muscles.
    Theys muscles are among the lst to be affected
    by trauma or degenerative conditions.

  • It sounds like they're detecting an emotional response. Which in my opinion, many people could use a computer controlling/filtering those responses. Just think, no more road rage!! The USPS should invest heavily in this research...
  • The best part for me would be instant face recognition, and an alarm clock function. Half an hour before you completely forget to go somewhere, a thought pops in your head: "Oh yes, I had to.....". For me it would be brilliant, my brain was made sadly lacking in ability to remember stuff.

    This would be more difficult than what they're talking about, because it's not controlling the computer with any old thought you can capture, it needs to be very specific thoughts that you have already learnt.

    The other thing I thought would be cool is a kind of mental HUD, for example, you could link in a GPS receiver and go walking, and your route would appear as a dotted line in front of you. Even in the fog. And the mountains could be overlaid with their names and heights. All mind-controlled. Even more useful if you're blind.

    Clearly you'd need the reverse technology from the one mentioned (i.e. puter controlling brain not brain controlling puter) but they're working on that too.

    And if I could type without a keyboard, I could email with my brain. It would be telepathy! This would solve all the problems of how to do data entry now we have useful devices that are too tiny for keyboards. The implications are endless. Wow.

  • Sounds like the 21st century version of The Clapper.

    Brain on! Brain off!

  • My lab at the University of New Mexico has a project in BCI, in collaboration with a group at Sarnoff Labs in Princeton. We are using novel signal processing methods and new kinds of brain imaging instrumentation and hope to get higher bit rates and lower cognitive loads than current systems. We're always looking for good people to work on this kind of stuff, especially as grad students or postdocs.
  • We have thousands of nerve fibers running (for example) to our pinkie toes. Quite likely, there are motor neurons in us which have no function. The thing to do would be to connect a small subset of the toe-fibers to a control module, and use intensive biofeedback until the user got complete conscious control over the range of possible actions of the nerve fiber.

    Control over computers and such would not be the same as having it read your mind, but, assuming a good MUI (Motor User Interface), one could have very considerable control. I imagine that, if conditioned young enough, a child could learn to "type" at well over the fastest currently possible speeds, for one example. The possibilities are endless and, unlike having computers read our minds or brain waves, this seems a lot more likely to be a reality in the next ten years.

  • ...see how long you can actively not think 'delete all my files'. :)

  • This isn't mindreading (Score:3)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @05:44AM (#1092522) Homepage
    First of all, it's critical to emphasize that this isn't mindreading. It's a subtlely intelligent choice of a signal to detect: Whether an intended sound is heard, a desired action is queued for command, or whatnot, the common element is that all the mental systems that were tied into modifying the environment such that a given state was implemented fire on the success--they now all need to go into state change and act upon the success.

    These researchers are not reading their success signal, and for god's sake folks they're not fabricating a success signal(that's what drugs are for). They're looking for *a* success signal coming out of the hyperconnected neural network.

    It's really quite slick, if you ask me.

    Where things get *really* interesting is if they can start differentiating between error or disappointment types. "No I didn't want that at all" vs. "Yes, I wanted that thing to do something, but not that." might be an interesting place to start.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • I don't like this.

    I understand people getting enthusiastic facing the possibility of controlling hardware with their thoughts, but that implies the existence of hardware that can detect thoughts. And one may not have control on whether the hardware does so or not.The enthusiasm certainly comes from the assumption that the hardware input would be thought-controlled, but such a beast would be software-controlled, just like every piece of information hardware.

    Picture a situation in which your company installs a very user-friendly thought interface for you to work. You will type and sweep a lot less, but what prevents your employer from receiving daily reports on what you've been thinking during the day? And so on...

    Would we still have privacy?
  • unreal turnament will never be the same indeed. and maybe after planting mind feedback in those devices, you will also feel it when you get shot. mind reading is one thing, but mind writing is another, dangerous, complicated, but i think it's possible indeed, and that will be the next break through in that field.

  • Imagine that: you're surfing the web, there's an (or more) on the page you're reading, and you think: this may be interesting. An javascript/activeX/stufflikethat detect it thanks to your Mindware system, and immediately send your email adress to the company which has put the add, an you go in the "interested by our product" table of their databases. Oh, you mean it was the page which was interesting ? Ah, sorry. You will get your spam nonetheless.

    Then such a system will "better" itself, it will be able to change the form of these spam into something you won't reject. It'll search for the weak point in your mental armor that prevent you from being brainwashed. Adds will flow on TVs, computers, radios, on your cellphone/MP5player/GPS/all-in-one-watch, allways mutating to prevent you from being worried or annoyed by it. This intrusion on spam in your environment will brainwash you as easily as if there was a public write access in your mind.

    And there are other applications: imagine "mind activity detector" camouflaged in your cubicle: it won't maybe read your mind but it will surely be able to detect and report thought like "I'm bored" or "I want to sleep". And when your boss pass near and you suddenly have agressive thoughts, it will be carefully notified on some files.

    Next step: implantig a chip in all person to monitor their deplacement, under the cover to "ease their access" to place with restricted access. Sure, it'll be nice to have your home or lab doors open at your approach, without having to type codes.

    All these things that disguise themselves as amelioration and comfort but are in fact a way for corporations to bigbrotherise you are today's world greatest threat to civilization.

  • Just cross this with the research that Kevin Warwick is doing in cybernetics and then you can control your whole house (as well as other things).

    Kevin is working on an implant that can read and interpet the bio-electricimpulses from his central nervous system and transmitting them over the air waves as well as over the internet. He already had one implanted in his arm that controled the lights, doors, etc. in his office.

    I'm begining to think that we are only a few years from real cybernetics. I like this idea better than AI.


    flatrabbit,
    peripheral visionary
  • Now that is an interesting thought:

    ...a world which we perceive through our own five senses, and for us to tamper with our perception of reality in this way can only lead to a disaster for the human race. Remember, how can you trust the system supplying you with information?

    The real question is how you're so confident you can trust your own five senses? Sure the data you get is raw and uncontaminated, but before you can even think consciously and intelligibly about thoses inputs, they have already been processed and interpreted by your brain; and your brain, being a product of the social and environmental conditioning, is already warping and distorting the input in ways you are not aware of. Prejudices, instinct, favoritism, fears, etc. None of those are inherent in any input of the senses, but are deeply associated with many sights, scents, images, etc. because our brain creates these realities.

    The problem is that people are already brainwashed and don't realize it. A lot of problems may vanish if we realize that we are brainwashed and held captive by our innate sense of reality, which is non-connected to the outer reality which surrounds us.

    All this reminds me of AE Van Vogt with his Null-A trilogy. It was based on a theory by Alfred Korzybski (sp?) in Science and sanity.

    Well, I think I'm going to reread the books, this evening. It would be better than watching news about the recent worlwide flood of love :)

  • This isn't telepathic mindreading, but it's a limited form of mindreading anyway. If it can detect basic thought and emotions, it can already be dangerous.
  • I can't wait until I can hook up this interface to Quake/CounterStrike. How many games have you lost because you knew you wanted to duck but your fingers just wouldn't do that? Killer app is with video games. Or interface intense operations. I would pay decent money to win games I know I could have won or to code instantaneously.
  • I can't believe this, a whole article, and not one person has mentioned using are brains in a Beowulf cluster!
    That would be cool!
    BTW, I've seen this mind stuff in action, it was an experimental remote controll for your tv, it only partly worked, but was pretty interesting
  • "Not likely," Bayliss says. "Anything you can do with your brain can be done a lot faster, cheaper and easier with a finger and a remote control."

    It's important to remember this, guys: just 'cos its cooler doesn't mean it's better.

  • Re:Shadowrun? (Score:3)

    by wynlyndd ( 5732 ) <wynlyndd@gmai l . com> on Thursday May 04, 2000 @04:17AM (#1092532) Homepage
    It'll be the ESP ISP...

  • I think the comment by the researcher, "Anything you can do with your brain can be done a lot faster, cheaper and easier with a finger and a remote control." sums the whole thing up. This is great for people who can't use normal interfaces--ie paralysis victims--but for everyone else, not so much. Yes, I can don the nifty electric gear, and use my brain to turn on the tv, but I could just reach over and hit the 'on' switch.

    Using it for regular computer use seems really impractical, given the way the system, if I read the article right, seems to operate. You'd be sitting there, mentally screaming "YES!" "NO!" to pick out the letters in your email.

    But it's still cool.

  • Another Thought (Score:3)

    by zpengo ( 99887 ) on Thursday May 04, 2000 @04:20AM (#1092534) Homepage
    What if we could find that place in our brains the generates the pictures we "see" in our mind's eye, and then piped it to a television screen?

    Suddenly, there'd be no more need for special effects. For a good movie, you'd just need to hire someone who can stay focused for a few minutes at a time.

    Or it might be terrifying to see our own thoughts. What if we did it in realtime, would we get feedback and start blowing synapses?

  • The thing that sets this apart from another form of interfacing would be that the system will never interpret something differently than you intend it.

    What I mean is: if you want to search for Java, a searchengine or voicerecognition system has to use the word to interpret what you mean. Is it coffee you want or the language? Not the case here: they're both "stored" in totally different brainpatterns, so there's never any ambiguity...

    Which also means there could be a big problem: how can the software discover that you want some coffee? Since the whole concept of "coffee" is probably different for everybody, so patternmatching might not be sufficient - that's why at this moment all they can hear is a brain-wide "YEAH!!!". Anybody know more about how this can be accomplished in the future?

  • Heh! Reminds me of that early 80's film, Brainstorm (or was it Mindstorm) with Christopher Walken.

    The essence of the film was that sensory perceptions could be recorded by one person, and replayed (relived) by another (a'la Gibson's sensorium).

    The funny scene that comes to mind involved one of the researchers making a tight loop of sensory tape, to relive the moment of orgasm, for about 24 hours straight.

    The thing with Katz would be the exact reverse of that.

    "Katz! retch! Katz! retch! Katz! retch! Katz! retch! ... "
  • have you read the article? the research is being done into technology that will take outgoing signals from the brain and interpret them to simple functions like turning on a tv, stereo, and maybe some more advanced things. This is not a bidirectional mind scramble/descramble device.

    javajawa# sleep
  • BeOS....definitely BeOS.

  • Bla (Score:1)

    by WowTIP ( 112922 )
    Monitor -> eyes -> brain -> nerves -> mouse -> Computer

    Monitor -> eyes -> brain -> Translator device -> Computer

    If the translator device is real fast, alt.2 is probably the faster and better way.
  • ..I want to control my brain with my computer! it would be soo nice to be able to just grep through your memory trying to remember stuff you forget...it would be great for students.
    Of course, it may become a problem for newbies running BrLinux (Linux ported to the Brain), I mean you really should be running a pretty tight ship in your head...you gotta stay on top of all the latest security patches..it would be quite unfortunate if some script kiddie cracked your brain, and sent you off on a killing rampage through 4 provinces...after your body colapses from exaustion from swinging the axe so much, you would have to find a way to wipe, and reinstall your brain..I believe they are working on a mini-HOWTO for this, but it won't be out for a while...

    =P

  • pr0n (Score:1)

    by aliens ( 90441 )
    This just isn't going to work... what if they can't get the interface to filter out the thought of sex that men have so many times a day? I can see it now, millions of screens with nothing but the best pr0n being displayed.

    Scientist: Comeon, can't you think of anything else?
    Test Subject: I'm trying damnit! nuggggghhh

    pr0n flashes quickly on the screen and then a break through....
    Scientist: Beer, I should've known. NEXT!
  • It's true that the P300 (and other event-related potentials) have been known for years (and there's plently more work being done!), and that it's been the case that you need many trials to isolate these responses, but recently people have found ways to need only 8 or so trials - and I believe there is some work out there where you only need 1 or 2 trials.

    The key, as they said in the article, is filtering out all the extraneous noise - both in the external environment and from inside the head.

    That said, I agree that this is a bit overhyped at the current state of the research. Cool, but a long, long way from being the stuff of science fiction.

    W
  • So, will there be a thought standard?

    It only works if you think like me

  • I can see the problem now:

    Boss: Blah blah bl...Hey, you're not paying attention to what I have to say!

    Peon: Uhh, yeah I am!

    Boss: I can see your computer and it just opened a browser to a pr0n site and one to slashdot!

    >;)

    -Vel
  • This is seriously cool, just think how awsome it would be to play games! It would be like really being there! Or, think about the *portable* computer market! Because there would be no size taken up by the input devices, the pda like devices could shrink to REALLY small sizes. Unfortunately, there could be a bad side to this. How long would it be before someone could reverse the pathway and be able to control us through our computers? This smells alot like a big brother plan to me, but theoretically, if you can control your computer, couldn't your computer control you? Just something to think about, especially since it seems that every *good* technology created so far has had a bad side to it also. Take nuclear power for one example.....

  • OK, I agree that one could get P300 out from ten or so responses with proper spatial and temporal filtering. I have been doing that kind of stuff myself (see the new special issue of Neuro-otol.&Audiology on MMN for an outline).

    1 or 2 still sounds overoptimistic, and I fail to see any EEG technique with which one could extract meaningful P300 variation from a few responses only. 'Meaningful variation' means changes in P300 due to attentional effects. On the group level everything is possible, it's much harder with individuals (less data, individual variation).

    MEG or optical imaging could help, but MEG is expensive (done that as well) and optical is still in its infancy (although very interesting - they measure phase changes in a modulated light loop going through the skull to the cortex and back, noninvasively - for some reason neural activity changes the phase). fMRI is even more cumbersome and expensive.

  • Brings a whole new meaning
    to Van Eck Phreaking.

    Thank you.

    ^Z
  • heh. my problem would be with irc. rather than thinking one thing and typing another... well... I already type rather crude stuff...


    javajawa# sleep
  • ...where the guy glaces at the nuclear power plant, and for a split second wonders what it would be like to see it blow up? and that split second starts a chain of events that takes several minutes....

    (may or may not have been rudy rucker... the more i think about it, the more doubtful i am. one thing for sure: it was early 80's cyberpunk.)

  • Brainfingers seems to have a mind/computer device in production, check it out [brainfingers.com].

  • uh.... (Score:1)

    by .sig ( 180877 )
    Well, this sure sounds like a good idea, but even assuming that we can get it to work I really doubt I'd like something like this.
    I don't really want an interface based around somthing that I don't have complete control over. Imagine how much concentration you'd need to get just about anything done. Every time my mind wandered (which it does very frequently), my computer would wander right along with me. It sure train people not to have dirty thoughts in front of a computer... potentially quite an embarassing situation ;-)

    (For the record, if something like this is ever implemented, it just seems like something M$ would do. Windows has always been the operating system that went off and did what it thought you might want to do anyway, and this would just make it that much more user-independant. "Just strap yourself infront of the box, and we'll do the rest," doesn't sound like fun to me...)
  • What if we could find that place in our brains the generates the pictures we "see" in our mind's eye, and then piped it to a television screen?
    Suddenly, there'd be no more need for special effects. For a good movie, you'd just need to hire someone who can stay focused for a few minutes at a time.

    Hmm, sounds a lot like Wim Wenders [imdb.com]
    Until the End of the World.

    I watched this Y2K day, and was amazed that I wasn't bored by such a long, (2 1/2 hours +) movie. The cinematography was gorgeous, the whole movie had a dreamlike state, though it was odd as it started out as a crime/chase caper and ended up as science fiction.

    If you ever get a chance, I'd recommend it.

    George

  • Bah! I've been doing it for years! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... except the opposite.

    Cut to me in front of my computer while I look at it and think, "Please don't crash now, please don't crash now... please... ple...". CRASH!

    ARGH!

  • Some training both on the part of the computer and the user would probably be necessary. People have accomplished some amazing things using standard biofeedback techniques. After all, that kind of feedback is precisely how our brains were designed to learn.

    Consider a biofeedback keyboard in which the computer and the user worked together to learn what distinct brain states matched with the letter 'K'. It'd probably be a good bit like learning how to type - you stumble through each letter, hitting lots of wrong ones on the way, then you start typing words, then groups of words together. Soon, you're thinking at over a hundred words a minute, unencumbered by those slow, stupid nerve chains going all the way to your fingers.

    However, it makes one wonder about the possible psychological side effects of this type of training. People who use the computer all day do tend to lose their ability to empathize with actual people if the computer use isn't balanced by something a little less cerebral. The intense concentration on brain state might make it worse.

    -- If God is inside us, I hope he likes coffee, because that's what he's getting.

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