6 Electronic Devices You Can Control with Your Thoughts

From toys to mind monitoring, brain-computer interface options are already on the market

By David Pogue

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  How Far Away is Mind-Machine Integration?

In my Scientific American column this month, I wrote about the dawn of the brain–computer interface. Forget about keyboard, mouse, touch screens or even voice recognition: the real dream is thinking about what you want your gadget to do.
BCI (brain–computer interface) has long been a favorite of sci-fi movies (paging Professor Xavier!). However, some early BCI products are already for sale. Unfortunately, this isn't the dawn of BCI—it's the pre-dawn. These products are crude, imprecise and sometimes frustratingly nonresponsive—that's how it goes with EEG-based headsets, which pick up only the faintest electroencephalographic echoes of neural activity through the skull. (Beware, in particular, of the toys, which garner Amazon reviews ranging from wildly polarizing to absolutely scathing.) But these technologies are based on real BCI principles, and when they work, they're a fascinating glimpse of mind–machine merging mergers to come. (Below are representative online prices, such as those found on Amazon.)
Star Wars Science Force Trainer ($35): This toy includes a wireless headset, ping-pong ball and a clear plastic tube with a fan beneath. As you concentrate, your brain activity turns up the fan so that it blows a ping-pong ball up a tube. Yoda's voice guides you: "Reach out with your feelings! Use The Force. Do or do not; there is no try."

Mindflex ($47): Mattel's game is another ball-in-an-air-column setup. This time the object is to guide the ball through hoops, hurdles, funnels and a seesaw. You control the fan power, and therefore the height of the foam ball, with your thoughts; you control the ball's horizontal movement through the course with a knob.

Mindflex Duel ($44): For about the same price, you can buy a two-headset version of the Mindflex. In some games, your concentration controls the fan strength—as in the original game; in others, it controls the lateral movement of the sliding fan, so that you and a buddy can have a kind of "think of war" battle.

Neural Impulse Actuator ($107): This "brain mouse" is marketed as a Windows game-playing accessory that lets you control game functions with your thoughts. You can assign it to trigger left-clicks, for example, or to make your character walk or shoot.

MindSet ($199): This $199 headset, from NeuroSky, is a traditional Bluetooth headset, suitable for Skype calls and so on. But it's also an EEG headset, a somewhat less frivolous one than the games described above. The software includes a simple "brain-wave monitor" app, but the real potential lies in the developer kit, which allows programmers to come up with their own MindSet-driven software.

EPOC ($299): Emotiv's $299 headset is the most serious consumer option yet. The wired headset has 16 contacts, and you're supposed to wet them with saline solution for better contact. As a result, the sensitivity is far superior to what you get from the dry-connection, single-contact headsets. The company includes a few starter games and monitors to get you going—but here again, the real promise is the software development kit.

In short, most of the consumer BCI offerings so far fall under the headings "Gimmick" and "Quick Novelty Wear-Off Factor." But sometimes it's not about how well the bear dances—it's that the bear can dance at all.

Missile to knock out a country's electronics

PTI | Dec 3, 2012, 05.03 AM IST

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LONDON: From sci-fi to reality! A new missile which uses electromagnetic pulses to target buildings can permanently shut down a country's electronics without harming people, Boeing has claimed.

The US aircraft manufacturer claims to have successfully tested the weapon on a one-hour flight during which it knocked out the computers of an entire military compound in the Utah desert.

It's thought the missile could penetrate the bunkers and caves believed to be hiding Iran's alleged nuclear facilities, the 'Daily Mail' reported. However, experts have warned that the technology could be used to bring Western cities to their knees if it falls in the wrong hands.

During Boeing's experiment, the missile flew low over the Utah Test and Training Range, discharging electromagnetic pulses on to seven targets, permanently shutting down their electronics. Boeing said that the test was so successful that even the camera recording it was disabled.

Codenamed the Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), it is the first time a missile with electromagnetic pulse capability has been tested.

Boeing declined to release a film of the test, citing security reasons, but instead issued an artist's impression of it on video. A stealth aircraft in the clip deploys a missile that emits radio waves from its undercarriage which knock out the computer systems inside the buildings below, the report said.

The company also released a real film showing a row of computers that can be seen shutting down when the electromagnetic pulse is switched on.

Experts believe the missile is equipped with an electromagnetic pulse cannon, which uses a super-powerful microwave oven to generate a concentrated beam of energy which causes voltage surges in electronic equipment, rendering them useless before surge protectors have the chance to react.

Keith Coleman, CHAMP programme manager for Boeing's prototype arm Phantom Works, said the technology marked "new era in modern warfare". "In the near future, this technology may be used to render an enemy's electronic and data systems useless even before the first troops or aircraft arrive.

"We hit every target we wanted and made science fiction into science fact. When the computers went out, it actually took out the cameras as well. It was fantastic," Coleman said. 

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World's most complex artificial brain ever passes IQ tests

 

Even though the IQ tests are the most basic ones, the news that an artificial brain can tackle them might give some people pause. Does this signal the rise of the machines? The neuroscientists working on the large-scale model simulation of the brain say this version is still pretty simple compared to the real deal, but it is valuable in helping us see and understand how our brains developed over time.
The artificial brain, built by neuroscientists and software engineers at the University of Waterloo in Canada, runs on a supercomputer, uses a 784 pixel digital eye for visual input and has a robot arm to draw responses. It even has a name — Spaun (Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network.
So far this sounds like your average robot scientists have been playing with. What makes this artificial brain different is that it's not constructed like a robot, but rather mimics the structure of a real brain. It has 2.5 million simulated neurons that were constructed to pattern the brain's cranial subsystems. This means the artificial brain has a prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and thalamus all wired together to work like the wiring of real thing.
The various sections of Spaun are designed the way scientists felt the real counterparts would work. The visual input from the eye is processed by the thalamus, data is stored in the neurons and the basal ganglia direct the appropriate portion of the brain to complete a task. The team designed the brain to perform its computation in the most physiologically accurate way — even simulating voltage spikes and neurotransmitters.
A basic example of the task or computation required of it is when nscientists flashing various numbers and letters at it. These are read by the Spaun's eye and then reads into memory. Another letter or symbol provides the instruction for the basic input (or memory) and then the robotic arm moves as directed.
Speaking of tasks, aside from controlling robot arms and passing IQ tests, just what can this artificial brain actually do? Is it going to take my job? Not yet; so far it only performs eight different tasks that range from copy drawing, counting, question answering and fluid reasoning.
Chris Eliasmith, who leads the research team at the University of Waterloo in Canada, explained to PopSci:

"These artificial brains don't actually do anything. They don't see, they don't remember, they don't recognize objects," he said. "They sit there and generate complex voltage patterns, but those complex voltage patterns aren't tied to behavior."

What has the scientific team learned? Well, first they know that Spaun struggles to store more than a few numbers in its short-term memory. Bottom line, this artificial brain with 2.5 million neurons is actually fairly simple — but what is interesting is by getting it to process the simple tasks it does start to build more complex behavior by weaving the simpler tasks together. This is the behavior the scientists believe show how our brains may have developed over time.
What does the future hold for this giant artificial brain? The research team isn't finished with it just yet. They want to try to create "adaptive plasticity" in Spaun. This means developing the ability for the currently hardwired artificial brain to rewire its neurons and learn tasks by doing rather than being instructed. And in rewiring neurons, it implies the ability for the brain to "heal" itself — an area of significant study for those with brain injuries.
Eliasmith is working on a program where Spaun wouldn't be given specific instructions, just positive or negative feedback — in theory this would lead to the neurons adapting to finding strategies to complete its own tasks.
The research is interesting on its own, but it does have a larger purpose. Eliasmith tells PopSci: "It lets us understand how the brain, the biological substrate, and behavior relate. That's important for all sorts of health applications."
One example of this has Eliasmith working in reverse. In working with the artificial brain he also "killed" some of the synthetic neurons to see what happened. He was able tow watch how performance degraded — all of which could help scientists understand aging and disorders that attack the brain cells.
In testing he has "killed" synthetic neurons and watched performance degrade, which could provide an interesting insight into natural aging and degenerative disorders.
Interested in the development of the artificial brain? Well, there are a few ways to learn more. ExtremeTech has some additional videos that show how Spaun works. Or, if you are feeling very DIY, you can download the Spaun neural model for yourself (it's built on Nengo — a graphical open source software).
You just never know what you are going to find when you start tinkering with the brain — artificial or not.