Mind-reading Headset Lets You Google Just With Your Thoughts

Many people accept eagerly awaited the twenty-four hours they tin can control technology using just their brains. Companies like Emotiv Systems, Neurosky, and Interaxon, some of which showcased this year at CES, manufacture headsets that claim to practise just that. Breathless articles take gushed about video games and even cars controlled but by a person's listen. But this isn't quite heed control — at least, no one'south decision-making tech with but their thoughts.

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These headsets sense the electrical action inside a person's encephalon using a technique known as electroencephalography, or EEG. The technique works similar this: Electrodes are placed on the surface of someone's head; these electrodes can measure the electrical signals produced by the brain's neurons through the scalp. EEG has been used as a diagnostic tool for more than one-half a century. Neurologists can identify patterns in a patient's encephalon wave activity, allowing them to spot abnormalities that could requite ascension to seizures or other neurological disorders.

Commercial EEG headsets are more like gimmicks

It'due south just recently that people have started harnessing EEG as a mode to control technology and devices. EEG has been used to help amputees command high-tech prosthetic limbs . Patients with spinal cord injuries or ALS could potentially utilize the technology to mobilize their wheelchairs or better communicate. Commercially, EEG headsets claim to give wearers something akin to super powers; headlines exuberantly proclaim things like " The Video Game Helmet That Tin Hack Your Brain " or " Brainwave-reading headset lets yous control your Tv with your mind ." As more than wear technologies emerge that claim to quantify our biology, it's merely expected that devices would be created to tap into our brains. Simply these commercial EEG headsets are more than like gimmicks.

Take Emotiv Systems, which makes an EEG headset called Epoc. Though Epoc has been used to command video game avatars, motorized skateboards, and cars, the headset isn't marketed for any specific job. Emotiv says the device is more for enabling research in the fields of neuropathy, entertainment, and marketing. The controls work like this, according to Emotiv: users tin "train" Epoc by thinking of certain objects or motions over and over; this allows the EEG to pick up the patterns associated with each thought. "You tin can think 'wing' or retrieve about something that you tin can call up with clarity," says Kim Du, a spokesperson for Emotiv. "You lot can think about pushing, think about the color blue. The software programme is looking for that specific design."

Brain patterns can be used to control video game avatars

Those patterns can and so be used to command video game avatars, for instance. That process works by assigning tasks to a person's diverse brain moving ridge patterns, which change depending on the individual's mental state. "There are predefined normal patterns for when you lot're awake, drowsy, when you're asleep, or engaging in activity," says Dr. Madeline Fields, an banana professor of neurology at Icahn Schoolhouse of Medicine at Mount Sinai. So for instance, an EEG organization could prompt a video game character to move forward on a screen if electrodes option up brain wave patterns associated with drowsiness. The character could then cease moving if a pattern for slumber is detected.

It'south important to remember that EEG can't actually read a person's thoughts. Instead, it connects neuronal patterns with actions or mental states. "If I move my right hand, and that creates a very clear signal that links to a computer command, that's an entirely different beast than me simply wanting my character in the game to plough left and turn right. We don't read what people are thinking," says Katharine Noe, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic. The technology may be able to identify patterns that arise from thinking sure words or phrases over and over once again, but EEG tin't decipher the specific words people are thinking — much less their desires.

EEG tin't actually read a person's thoughts

In that location are some other flaws with the system, too. For starters: the users accept hair. In clinical settings, EEG electrodes must be placed very delicately on the scalp in order to work properly. All the oils from the peel must be wiped away first so that the electrodes can be glued to the skin. Without this kind of care, bad measurements can issue. And that'south non all: EEG tin exist confused past outside signals. A lot of objects we use every day accept electrical activity, and that tin evidence up on an EEG. "And so if you lot're holding a cell phone up to your ear, it could cause interference with recording of existent cerebral action," says Noe.

These issues plague the consumer experience of EEG headsets — even those that don't brand lofty claims like the power to command cars. This yr at CES, InteraXon was showcasing its EEG meditation headset; information technology didn't fit people's heads, especially those of people with thick hair. The headset is meant to tell a wearer when he or she is properly meditating — only when I tried information technology out, the system continuously encountered errors. Before my meditation, information technology asked me to focus on examples of cities or languages — perhaps as a way to choice upwards the patterns of when my mind is at work. Then I was asked to articulate my mind. But in one case I was finished meditating, the results seemed to brand no sense. I was on a noisy showroom flooring filled with journalists loudly performing on-photographic camera presentations next to me, simply according to the headset, my heed seemed to pin between truthful meditative state and diversion frequently. I couldn't accept its results seriously, given how much was going wrong.

Commercial EEG headsets may have even bigger problems: it's possible they aren't picking up mental activity at all. Instead, they could be sensing the electric electric current produced by muscles in the trunk; heartbeats and eye movements generate voltage that EEGs tin read. That makes information technology hard to tell if a headset is actually measuring brain waves or just a furrowed brow. Emotiv claims its headset can read both muscle movements and encephalon waves, but it'southward difficult to tell which metric is being measured without knowing how the commercial headsets' algorithms piece of work. And while InteraXon's headset is supposedly being used in clinical trials to run across if information technology helps cancer patients meditate, there aren't any studies validating the headset.

EEG holds promise for controlling devices

That'south why Noe wouldn't trust an EEG-controlled machine. "I wouldn't go in the car, and I have to question what signal are they looking at and what is the auto actually doing," says Noe. Lara Marcuse, an assistant professor of neurology at the Ican School of Medicine at Mount Sinai agrees. "It'd be hard to control a auto," says Marcuse. "Yous can maybe make a ball motion backward and frontwards, simply it'd be difficult to requite information technology more direction. It's at a very early stage."

But Marcuse thinks EEG holds hope for controlling devices. That'southward because the electrodes are very good at picking up signals that indicate the torso is moving. "Lifting an arm is especially sensitive on the EEG," says Marcuse. When both arms are at residuum, the brain'southward neurons produce a specific pattern. But as shortly as a person moves an arm or even thinks near moving an arm, the pattern changes distinctly. This could be useful in the field of bionics. Since EEG is then sensitive to arm movements, patients could command a loftier-tech prosthetic limb, merely by concentrating on how they want the limb to move.

Additionally, EEG can record another strong brain pattern known as the P-300 moving ridge. This blueprint forms when a person reacts to seeing something he or she is meant to recognize. It's whenever y'all take an "aha" moment, Marcuse says.  "You lot could use this to dial a telephone number," she noted. "If you're on your iPhone and scrolling through pictures of your contacts, y'all see the person you need to call and then the EEG can telephone call that person."

A likelier future than EEG-controlled cars are headbands that may aid people with disabilities

A likelier future than EEG-controlled cars are headbands that may help people with disabilities. But for at present, those technologies are still likewise young. Then if you see someone promising you can command a machine using only your listen, hold onto your wallet — even the most advisable EEG devices are still in the research phase. Real EEG technology is "more in development, and people are getting close, but information technology'due south not like going to a convention and buying a product that'southward ready to use," says Noe.

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Source: https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/12/10754436/commercial-eeg-headsets-video-games-mind-control-technology

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