By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website, San Francisco |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7254078.stm
Gamers will soon be able to interact with the virtual world using their thoughts and emotions alone.
A neuro-headset which interprets the interaction of neurons in the brain will go on sale later this year.
"It picks up electrical activity from the brain and sends wireless signals to a computer," said Tan Le, president of US/Australian firm Emotiv.
"It allows the user to manipulate a game or virtual environment naturally and intuitively," she added.
The brain is made up of about 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, which emit an electrical impulse when interacting. The headset implements a technology known as non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) to read the neural activity.
Ms Le said: "Emotiv is a neuro-engineering company and we've created a brain computer interface that reads electrical impulses in the brain and translates them into commands that a video game can accept and control the game dynamically."
Headsets which read neural activity are not new, but Ms Le said the Epoc was the first consumer device that can be used for gaming.
"This is the first headset that doesn't require a large net of electrodes, or a technician to calibrate or operate it and does require gel on the scalp," she said. "It also doesn't cost tens of thousands of dollars."
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  This area of immersion and control could prove to be the breakthrough gaming has longed for.  Darren Waters, BBC Technology editor
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The use of Electroencephalography in medical practice dates back almost 100 years but it is only since the 1970s that the procedure has been used to explore brain computer interfaces.
The Epoc technology can be used to give authentic facial expressions to avatars of gamers in virtual worlds. For example, if the player smiles, winks, grimaces the headset can detect the expression and translate it to the avatar in game.
It can also read emotions of players and translate those to the virtual world. "The headset could be used to improve the realism of emotional responses of AI characters in games," said Ms Le.
"If you laughed or felt happy after killing a character in a game then your virtual buddy could admonish you for being callous," she explained.
The $299 headset has a gyroscope to detect movement and has wireless capabilities to communicate with a USB dongle plugged into a computer.
The Emotiv said the headset could detects more than 30 different expressions, emotions and actions.
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The headset could be used to improve the realism of emotional responses of AI characters in games Tan Le, Emotiv
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They include excitement, meditation, tension and frustration; facial expressions such as smile, laugh, wink, shock (eyebrows raised), anger (eyebrows furrowed); and cognitive actions such as push, pull, lift, drop and rotate (on six different axis).
Gamers are able to move objects in the world just by thinking of the action.
Emotiv is working with IBM to develop the technology for uses in "strategic enterprise business markets and virtual worlds"
Paul Ledak, vice president, IBM Digital Convergence said brain computer interfaces, like the Epoc headset were an important component of the future 3D Internet and the future of virtual communication.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7254078.stm
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Army developing ‘synthetic telepathy’
Similar technology marketed as a way to control video games by thought
By Eric Bland
Discovery Channel
updated 10/13/2008 10:52:44 AM ET
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27162401/ns/technology_and_science-science/
Vocal cords were overrated anyway. A new Army grant aims to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. No need to type an e-mail, dial a phone or even speak a word.
Known as synthetic telepathy, the technology is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG. Similar technology is being marketed as a way to control video games by thought.
"I think that this will eventually become just another way of communicating," said Mike D'Zmura, from the University of California, Irvine and the lead scientist on the project.
"It will take a lot of research, and a lot of time, but there are also a lot of commercial applications, not just military applications," he said.
The idea of communicating by thought alone is not a new one. In the 1960s, a researcher strapped an EEG to his head and, with some training, could stop and start his brain's alpha waves to compose Morse code messages.
The Army grant to researchers at University of California, Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland has two objectives. The first is to compose a message using, as D'Zmura puts it, "that little voice in your head."
The second part is to send that message to a particular individual or object (like a radio), also just with the power of thought. Once the message reaches the recipient, it could be read as text or as a voice mail.
"The eventual application I see is for students sitting in the back of the lecture hall not paying attention because they are texting," said D'Zmura. "Instead, students could be back there, just thinking to each other."
EEG-based gaming devices are large and fairly conspicuous, but D'Zmura thinks that eventually they could be incorporated into a baseball hat or a hood.
Six real-life 'X-Files'
Another use for such a system is for patients with Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS. As the disease progresses, patients have fully functional brains but slowly lose control over their muscles. Synthetic telepathy could be a way for these patients to communicate.
One of the first areas for thought-based communication is in the gaming world, said Paul Sajda of Columbia University.
Commercial EEG headsets already exist that allow wearers to manipulate virtual objects by thought alone, noted Sajda, but thinking "move rock" is easier than, say, "Have everyone meet at Starbucks at 5:30."
One difficulty in composing specific messages is fundamental — EEGs are not very specific. They can only locate a signal to within about one to two centimeters. That's a large distance in the brain. In the brain's auditory cortex, for example, two centimeters is the difference between low notes and high notes, D'Zmura said.
Placing electrodes between the skull and the brain would offer more precise readings, but it is expensive and requires invasive surgery.
To work around this problem, the scientists need to gain a much better understanding of what words and phrases light up what brain sections. To create a detailed map of the brain scientists will also use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG).
Each technology has its own strengths and weaknesses. EEGs detect brain activity only on the outer bulges of the brain's folds. MEGs read brain activity on the inner folds but are too large to put on your head. FMRIs detect brain activity more accurately than either but are heavy and expensive.
Of all three technologies EEG is the one currently cheap enough, light enough and fast enough for a mass market device.
The map generated by all three technologies will help the computer guess which word of phrase a person means when a part of the brain is lights up on the EEG. The idea is similar to how dictation software like Dragon NaturallySpeaking uses context to help determine which word you said.
Mapping the brain's response to most of the English language is a large task, and D'Zmura says that it will be 15-20 years before thought-based communication is reality. Sajda, who is on sabbatical in Japan to research using EEGs to scan images rapidly, sounded skeptical but excited.
"There are technical hurdles that need to be ovecome first, but then again, 20 years ago people would have thought that the two of us talking to each other half a world away over Skype (and Internet-based phone service) was crazy," said Sajda.
To those who might be nervous about thought-based communication turning into a sci-fi comedy of errors, D'Zmura says not to worry. Mind-message composition would take specific conscious thoughts and training to develop them. The device would also have a on/off switch.
"When I was a kid I occasionally said things that were inappropriate, and I learned not to do that," said D'Zmura. "I think that people would learn to think in a way the computer couldn't interpret. Or they can just switch it off."
Towards a Real Time Human Brain-Computer Interface with Neurofeedback: Improving Differentiability by Blind Source Separation
https://peacepink.ning.com/profiles/blogs/braincomputorinterface-2
Mind control next stage of electronics
January 7, 2011
http://www.rapidonline.com/latestnews.aspx?id=800328832&tier1=I...
Global semiconductor manufacturers may soon be helping to create a new generation of mind-controlled consumer electronics.
While a significant majority of the gadgets on display at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas boast touch-screen technology, according to Hewlett-Packard global marketing chief Xavier Lauwaert, this could merely be a short-term fad.
Addressing delegates and journalists at the major industry event, he expressed his confidence that mind-controlled devices represent the next logical step for the industry.
Semiconductors and sensors and other parts are likely to be switched over to making these within the next few years.
"I believe in mind control," he said.
"The next revolution of the HP PCs will be mind control", he added, though he conceded that touch will remain as the predominant 'alternative input' device for the next five or six years.
These comments come just days after the analyst firm Gartner predicted that global IT spending is set to rise by five per cent to $3.6 trillion (£2.3 trillion) over the year ahead.
Rapid Electronics is a leading UK supplier of energy saving products, electronic components and electrical equipment.
Mind Technologies’ Master Mind & Mind Mouse Allow You To Control Your Computer With The Power Of Your Mind. Okie Dokie.
by Nicholas Deleon on December 20, 2010
http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/12/20/mind-technologies-master-mind-...
Mind Technologies will begin selling the Emotiv Headset on January 1 for $299. What’s perhaps more interesting is that, when used with the company’s software, you can control your computer with the power of your mind. Is Psycho Mantis or Jesse Ventura the president and CEO of Mind Technologies.
There’s three main piece of software: Master Mind, Mind Mouse, and Think Tac Toe. The little blurb on their Web site says of Master Mind: “Existing PC games such as World of Warcraft and Call of Duty can now be played with the power of your mind, rather than using the traditional computer keyboard and mouse.”
Or if gaming’s not your thing, there’s also Mind Mouse, which “is a revolutionary thought-controlled software application which allows the user to navigate the computer, click and double click to open programs, compose email and send with the power of their mind.”
I have no idea what to make of any of this—MIND CONTROL?!—, but I did laugh at the guy in the above embedded video playing Modern Warfare 2. What’s the mind control method of uninstalling that nonsense?
Then we have Mind Mouse, which is more for everyday software applications.
The narrative is nice and all, helping disabled folks use their computer a little more effectively, but I think it’s only prudent to be skeptical here.
Good luck to everyone involved, but it’s all a little weird for my tastes.
ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2011) — Daniel Moran has dedicated his career to developing the best brain-computer interface, or BCI, he possibly can. His motivation is simple but compelling. "My sophomore year in high school," Moran says, "a good friend and I were on the varsity baseball team. I broke my arm and was out for the season. I was feeling sorry for myself when he slide into home plate head first and broke his neck.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110218142440.htm
"So I knew what I wanted to do when I was 15 years old, and all my career is just based on that."
Moran, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering and neurobiology in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, is young enough that his career has coincided with the rapid development of the field of brain interfaces. When he began, scientists struggled to achieve lasting control over the movement of a cursor in two dimensions. These days, his aspirational goal is mind control of the nerves and muscles in a paralyzed arm.
A typical primate arm uses 38 independent muscles to control the positions of the shoulder and elbow joints, the forearm and the wrist. To fully control the arm, a BCI system would need 38 independent control channels.
The latest from Moran's lab
There are four types of brain-computer interfaces: EEGs, where the electrodes are outside the skull; microelectrodes, where the electrodes are inserted in the brain; ECoGs, grids of disk-like electrodes that lie directly on the brain, and, Moran's choice, EECoGs, grids of disk-like electrodes that lie inside the skull but outside the dura mater, a membrane that covers and protects the brain.
Moran has just completed a set of experiments with MD/PhD student Adam Rouse to define the minimum spacing between the EECoG electrodes that preserves the independence of control channels. Together with Justin Williams at the University of Wisconsin, he has built a 32-channel EECoG grid small enough to fit within the boundaries of the sensorimotor cortex of the brain.
His next step is to slip the thin, flexible grid under a macaque's skull and to train the monkey to control -- strictly by thinking about it -- a computational model of a macaque arm that he published in the Journal of Neural Engineering in 2006.
This might sound like science fiction, but in 2006, Moran and his long-time collaborator Eric Leuthardt, MD, a Washington University neurosurgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, had demonstrated that a young patient, in the hospital for surgery to treat intractable epilepsy, could play the video game Space Invaders just by thinking about it.
Of course the virtual arm is a much more ambitious project. Only two degrees of freedom (two independent control channels) are required to move the Space Invaders' cursor in a two-dimensional plane.
The arm, on the other hand, will have seven degrees of freedom, including rotation about the shoulder joint, flexion and extension of the elbow, pronation and supination of the lower forelimb, and flexion, extension, abduction and adduction of the wrist.
(The monkey will not be harmed in this experiment, but instead will be persuaded by a virtual reality simulator into treating the virtual arm as though it were its own.)
Using the virtual arm, Moran showed that the classic task that has been used to study motor control for 20 years, called center-out reaching, does not adequately separate out the control signals that add up to an arm motion, making it difficult to determine which part of the brain is controlling which element of the motion.
So the monkey will instead be asked to trace with its virtual hand three circles that intersect in space at 45 degrees to one another, like interlocked embroidery hoops. Because this task better separates degrees of freedom, it will make it easier for the scientists to map cortical activity to details of movement, such as joint angular velocity or hand velocity.
Should this experiment be successful, and Moran fully expects it will be, he would like eventually connect his EECoG BCI to a new peripheral nerve-stimulating electrode he is developing together with MD/PhD student Matthew R. MacEwan. By connecting these two devices they will create a neuroprosthetic arm: that is, a paralyzed arm that can move again because the mind is sending signals to peripheral nerves that stimulate muscles to expand or contract.
Neuroprosthestics like the one Moran and colleagues are designing may one day help people suffering from spinal cord injury, brainstem stroke or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which paralyzes the body while leaving the mind intact.
The background
BCI has been slow to develop in part because early scientists worked with two "platforms" that have turned out to have serious limitations: EEG systems that measure brain signals through the skull and arrays of microelectrodes inserted directly into the brain.
EEG systems have a series of drawbacks related to the distance between the electrodes and the scene of the action. They have poor spatial resolution, the signals do not contain detailed information, and the signals are weak.
"Here's the deal," says Moran. "The brain is about an inch below the surface of your scalp, which in recording terms is a long, long way away. When you're on the surface of the scalp, it's kind of like being five blocks from Busch Stadium. You can't hear anything unless someone hits a home run and all 60,000 fans scream simultaneously.
"For an EEG, you need the neurons in a chunk of cortex about the size of a quarter screaming at the same time in order to record anything. And the primary motor cortex, the thin strip of the brain that controls the skeletal muscles, is so small you're only going to get a few control channels up there."
There are other drawbacks to EEG as well. For example, it takes many training sessions (roughly 20 to 50 half-hour sessions) to learn to control an EEG BCI.
Still, Moran and colleagues write in a review article in Neurosurgical Focus, EEG BCIs perform better than is sometimes supposed. They allow accurate control of a computer cursor in two or three dimensions and so far they are the only systems that have achieved clinical use (in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal cord injury).
Microelectrode arrays
The traditional alternative to an EEG platform has been an array of microelectrodes whose tiny tips are implanted a few millimeters into the motor cortex.
Microelectrodes were implanted in both monkeys (in the 1970s) and in humans (in 1998), and were very successful -- but only for a short time.
They suffer from what is probably a fatal drawback: The insertion of the electrodes initiates a reactive cell response that promotes the formation of a sheath around the electrode that electrically isolates it from the surrounding neural tissue.
Some labs are investigating biomaterial coatings for electrodes or drug delivery systems that would prevent this foreign body response, but these efforts are still preliminary.
No needles
In working with penetrating microelectrodes scientists made several discoveries that had interesting implications.
The first systems recorded the action potentials in single neurons, but in the 1980s, scientists discovered that populations of neurons in the motor cortex could be used to control the direction and speed of movements in three-dimensional space.
These small assembles of cortical cells synchronize their activity to produce high-frequency local field potentials, called gamma waves, that resemble signals from nearby single-unit microelectrodes.
In short, the gamma waves from neuronal populations can substitute for the action potentials from individual neurons. This meant it wasn't necessary to poke anything into the brain to get a useful signal. Instead, a sheet of disc like electrodes could be laid on the surface of the brain.
Moran was able to piggyback his first ECoG experiments on human epilepsy monitoring taking place at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
"Our first ECoG experiments in 2004 were done with people," he says. "Patients with focal (localized) seizures that cannot be controlled with medication are regularly implanted with ECoG grids so that surgeons can pinpoint damaged portions of the brain for removal without disturbing healthy tissue. "
In 2006, Moran and Leuthardt attached an ECoG grid that had been implanted in a 15-year-old boy to monitor seizures to a computer running the game Space Invaders.
In order to move the cannon right, the subject thought about wiggling his fingers and to make it move left he thought about wiggling his tongue. "He could duck and dive and had pretty elegant control of the video game," Moran says, "and he made it to level three on the first day."
In the video the subject can be seen wiggling his fingers, but this behavior soon drops away, Moran says. The brain adapts and instead of imagining "wiggle fingers" the boy imagines "cursor right."
Intuitively you would think that signals from the motor cortex would provide the best control for tasks involving movement. But even this turned out not to be true. In 2007, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison reported that patients were able to teach themselves to modulate gamma band activity either by imagining hand, foot or tongue movements, or by imagining a phone ring tone, a song or the voice of a relative. In other words, they were able to train neurons in the auditory as well as the motor cortex to control movement.
A thin sheet slipped under the skull
All of this was very exciting. What if, Moran wondered, the brain was completely plastic and populations of neurons could arbitrarily be reassigned to control movement in different directions in space?
If neuronal populations could be reassigned, maybe more electrodes could be crowded into a grid without losing independent control of movement along different axes in space.
If the electrodes were shrunk as well as moved closer together, he wondered, how far could you go? How many degrees of freedom could you bring under the brain's control?
And why not make the implants safer as well? Instead of laying the electrode grids on the brain's surface, why not lay them on the dura mater, the outermost of the three membranes surrounding and protecting the brain and spinal cord.
In 2009, Moran published the first studies of epidural electrocortiocography (EECoG -- not to be confused with ECoG). Recording sites over the motor cortex of monkeys were arbitrarily assigned to control a cursor's motion in the horizontal and vertical directions as the monkey traced circles on a computer screen.
In the latest set of experiments, Moran sought to define the minimal separation between electrodes that preserved independence of control. Once a monkey gained control of the cursor, the initial electrodes were abandoned and control was given to two electrodes that were closer together. The next week, the control electrodes were closer still.
Moran found that the electrodes, which were initially a centimeter apart, maintained their independence until they were only a few millimeters apart. "So now that we know how many electrodes we can pack into an area, we have some idea how many degrees of freedom we'll be able to control," he says.
Together with Williams, he designed a 32-channel EECoG supported on a sheet of plastic thinner than Saran Wrap that sucks down to the dura and sticks like glue. He can hardly wait to test it with the virtual arm.
"I like doing basic research and I want to continue to do basic research," Moran says, "but I also really want to solve the problem and help people. Someone's got to get the technology translated to the marketplace, so we're trying to do that as well.
"Eventually," he says, "we'll have a little piece of Saran Wrap with telemetry. We'll drill a small hole in the skull, pop the bone out, drop the device in, replace the bone, sew up the scalp and you'll have what amounts to Bluetooth in your head that translates your thoughts into actions.
"My passion is for paralyzed individuals," he says, "but you can see down the road that a lot of people will want one of these devices."
Brain-controlled prosthetic arm developed
From ANI
http://www.dailyindia.com/show/432992.php
Washington, April 03: Two Ryerson University undergraduate biomedical engineering students have developed prosthetic arm that is controlled by brain signals.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/wireless-brain/Wireless
Brain-to-Computer Connection Synthesizes Speech
http://mobihealthnews.com/5741/shorts-start-up-raises-535k-wireless...
Mobile Health News - Where Remote Health Care Meets the Clouds
http://tinyurl.com/5uuuhhn
Radio Pharmeceutical - Websters Dictionary
http://www.sfn.org/skins/main/pdf/brainfacts/2008/brain_facts.pdf
Brain Facts - A primer on the brain and nervous system.
http://www.apa.org/research/action/glossary.aspx
The American Psychological Association - Glossary of Terms
http://www.rfmh.org/nki/programs/dcj-sci%20am%20article.pdf
Decoding Schizophrenia
http://quizlet.com/2276086/psych-vocab-ch-1-4-flash-cards/
Psych Vocab - Chapter 1-4 Flash Cards
http://www.helium.com/items/2082676-the-many-uses-of-radio-waves
The many uses of radio waves
http://www.drugs.com/enc/mri-of-the-head.html
MRI of the head (This States that it "Cannot be Felt by Patient" but the Energy Passes Right Through the brain.
You will lie on a narrow table which slides into a large tunnel-like tube within the scanner. In addition, a small device may be placed around the head. This is a special body coil which sends and receives the radio wave pulses. It is designed to improve the quality of the images.
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/modmed.html
Modern medicine and physicology
http://tinyurl.com/6co8e7h
pharmaceuticals, radio signals and the brain
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