Playing Games With One's Brainwaves

PolloDiablo writes "Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have reported success with recording the signals a brain sends out to the other parts of the body and using them to play a game. The subjects had to move a cursor towards a target in a one-dimensional environment without using any bodypart, just pure brainpower. One subject had a success rate of 100%. This could prove a breakthrough in the use of prosthetics. The next step is repeating the same test in a 2-dimensional environment. Similar tests have been done with monkeys before but never with humans."

Not a Practical Application

[jeremy_dot]

activity-data taken invasively right from the brain surface

I don't think that extra millisecond of response time in your favorite videogame is worth invasive brain surgery.

My point is, this sounds incredible, however the topic is slightly misleading; this is not yet ready as a practical application because it does require brain surgery, and I for one am not in the mood to have an assortment of wires placed on the surface of my brain.

Found something to back me up

[bersl2]

This seems to have been done many times before. This article [infoworld.com] from August 2002 says:

The next step gets scary. EEG (electroencephalogram) measures brain activity. So far in early experiments, NASA has been able to get volunteers to move a cursor on the screen merely by thinking left or right, up or down. This goes beyond bio feedback, Wheeler was quick to add.

What I saw was one dimensional, and I think I saw it on the Discovery Channel back in the day, as in 2001 or before.

Read the Article, And...

[Ieshan]

If you read the article, you'll note that the researchers aren't using EEG, which is part of the reference you include in your seperate post.

The difference between an EEG and the technique they use in this study is invasiveness - EEGs are Non-Invasive, that is, they don't need to stick anything into your head (they attach electrodes at various points on the skull corresponding to lobes of the brain) - this study uses the ECoG, a more invasive technique for monitoring brain activity.

Note that the "breakthrough" was in acquisition of the task. This increased acquisition level may lead to much faster experimentation. Of course, the acquisition comes at a cost - invasive surgery.

Just thought I'd keep you up to article, there. =)