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Surfing The Net With Brain Waves?
deepfry writes: "Today's Wired News is running a story on the "Attention Trainer." The
$899 helmet-type device is supposed to help children improve their concentration by monitoring their brain signals as they play games. Does any one know how this technology works?"
So, how long until they market this to parents, so they can monitor their kids' brainwaves while they surf the net?
"Uh oh, Ward, there's a Porn Alarm going off, I bet Wally is looking at that naughty web site again!"
"Thanks, June, I'll be right back. Oh, Wally..."
- Mike
I'd hook up my brain to the internet and immediately be targeted for a denial of service attack.
The biggest signal in the vicinity of the head are from eye muscle movement. A quality EEG machine avoids these.
Right now there are many centers that have started to use this technology to treat children with ADD; it works like how one learns motor control, since with that one gets visual feedback by seeing one's arm move when directed. The only difference here is that normally one cannot tell what their brain waves are doing while they are doing something; this just maps the brain waves and gives visual and auditory feedback to train someone to control their alpha and beta waves.
I imagine the video game part has something to do with This old article, just a guess though.
# debian/rules
Frankly, I get a little upset when people portscan my firewall, much less MY FREAKING' BRAIN.
If you have ever heard of an electroencephalogram, you'll know how this works. Basically, there are many points on the head which have weak electrical signals. When these signals are amplified, they show activity of the brain -- when the child is about to have a seizure, they change dramatically and become "jumpy". My theory on how the thing works is this: an IC amplifies the signals, and sends them to an ADC. A microcontroller analyzes the signal and raises a red flag when they start to change. Nothing new, considering that electroencephalographs existed for a LONG time now. The thing certainly doesn't cost anything close to $900 to produce, considering how cheaply you can make an integrated circuit which does everything that needs to be done. The idea of bringing it to the consumer is original, although it's probably inaccurate as hell. The electrodes need to make very close contact with the head (to pick up the electrical signal) which is impossible to do with a simple helmet and is very uncomfortable.
The technology itself is something that was discovered years ago but it isn't until recently that advances have made the cost involved low enough to have visiblity for the average consumer. I am a software engineer working with Andrew Junker, the creator of the Cyberlink, on just such technology. The device allows me to sit in front of my computer, without the need to literally lift a finger, and move the mouse cursor around and click and open applications and such. You wear a headband with three (3) eletrodes that rest on your forehead that pick up EEG, EOG and EMG signals for analysis and control. The website itself is a little dated since we're adding new features that we have yet to post. Being a cross-platform developer I am rewriting the API to be able to compile on nearly any environment. Even my Palm Pilot. ;P The people that have already benefitted from this technology greatly are those that have had a serious spinal injury or something that leaves them paralyzed and unable to interact with others in a normal way. Some have learned how to use the Cyberlink well enough to type messages to their family after years of silence in a vegetative state. Pretty cool stuff. ;P *chuckle* It has a couple ways to be used and most people can pick up basic control with the unit within a few minutes. Since I suffer from tendonitis I'd also interested in the technology as a way to allow my wrists to recover from the injury. Its cool technology and it is available now... If interested, check it out at www.brainfingers.com.. The website even has a message board where people discuss some of the basics about the device and the technology involved. If you have any questions about what sorts of things the development API allows you to do, you can drop me an email at cyberlink_at_lifepod_dot_com. Cheers. :)
Michael
Next thing you know you'll be deep inside enemy lines guns blazing.. You seem to notice a little flicker in your HUD, hear a little whisper over your headset or is there someone close to you. You look around, there's no one there. And you hear it again, more alert this time you can barely make out the sound Drink Budweiser and realize it's only a virtual advertisement.
Are YOU listed?
http://www.skepdic.com/auras.html
-Ben
In a recent (oh, say 6 months ago) issue of SciAm, they detailed how to build a heart monitor (ECG), which could be used as the basis of such a device.
t
r ainmaster.com/
I have a copy of that Byte article, lying around somewhere. From what I remember, the device was basically a very high-gain opamp - and very expensive (at the time). What it provided that other op-amps didn't was electrical isolation from the circuit (so you don't give yourself a frontal lobotomy vi electrocution while using it). In addition, the output was processed somewhat to remove noise (IIRC).
Doing a little searching on google, I came up with this link - something called the Brainmaster. The following link is a note detailing how to build it:
http://cs.felk.cvut.cz/~holoubl/stranka2/eeg.tx
Next, is a link referenced in the above note, with information on coding, documentation, etc:
ftp://brainmaster.com/pub/brainm/rel17/
Did some more searching, and there is a new release:
ftp://brainmaster.com/pub/brainm/rel18/
Finally, go to the next level, lots more:
ftp://brainmaster.com/pub/brainm/
http://www.b
Have fun!
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
If this system works like previous attempts at treating ADD/ADHD and other attentional problems via EEG biofeedback, it works by monitoring the ratio between the patient's beta and theta activity levels. An attentive state is typically characterized by a beta/theta ratio of less than one. Such systems typically produced visual output (graphs for adults, a simple video game for children), and over time the patient learns how to produce the desired ratio. A decade ago, I was a subject in a semi-experimental setup like this. After a few weeks, I had some limited success in consciously adjusting on-screen graphs.
There's a big problem with it, however: it doesn't really work very well. The beta/theta ratio is characteristic of concentration, but it isn't itself concentration. While the patients can learn to manipulate this ratio, they're only learning to ape the symptoms of being attentive.
... Apparently you have to think in Russian.
--
I would be a paid subscriber if Taco and Hemos weren't such cunts
trying to associate single neurons with particular brain processes is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
No one was suggesting assigning functions to single neurons - but rather studying the nervous system on the basis of the signals of single neurons. I would suggest that there is an enormous difference. Researchers have used signal detection theory in several well known examples in the labs of Ranulfo Romo and Bill Newsome to demonstrate that signals of some neurons, when averaged together in groups of around 100, can predict the decision of the animal in discrimination trials. These studies on relatively simple percepts can and will be elaborated into more complex behaviors as time progresses.
Using microelectrode technology we have been able to verify that sensory disturbances exist in focal hand dystonia, a sensory-motor disorder that can be understood as a complication of repetitive stress injury. Such detailed observations as we made cannot be made with EEG. However, MEG studies were started after the animal studies to demonstrate recordings that were abnormal and predicted by our hypothesis. (EEG was inappropriate because the area in question is orthogonal to the radial vectors picked up in EEG).
This is just one example of a case in which recordings made in lab animals transferred nearly completely to humans in the wild.
EEG-type monitoring also does not measure the level of anything - it is only sensitive to changes in vector averaged voltages. Whereas signals carried by neurons have bandwidths of around 1-4 kHz, EEG hardly detects any energy above 100 Hz. All you get is a grossly averaged signal envelope that represents some aspects of action potentials and synaptic currents - in hypothesis only. If all the neurons in a cortical area had very high firing rates, but were largely asynchronized, EEG would measure nothing.
Even knowing the neural signals exactly it is very difficult to predict the EEG with a high precision.
Even so, we have studied field potentials - a kind of greatly amplified EEG - in depth in very simple cerebral cortical systems. It is far from obvious, even in such a simple case, how one can go from field potentials to neural signals.
The signal processing of the brain represents such a challenge because the purest signals can be measured only by microelectrodes with tip exposures of 5 microns or less - as originally described by Galambos in 1943. That presents an enormous technical difficulty that challenges investigators still.
If you've done EEG you know the limitations, and the variance, and the problems of uneven electrical conductance interfaces, and the studies to hypothesize what synaptic and action potential derived currents contribute to signals. I speak with EEG researchers regularly, and respect their work immensely. I don't think they would suggest a helmet such as the one described in the article would be adequate for much.
It's an EEG hooked up to a visual display. It provides a positive cue when the EEG pattern registers activity that the manufacturer considers attentive (this would be terribly subjective) and a negative cue when the EEG pattern registers activity the manufacturer considers inattentive.
The catch is the subjectivity of the triggering of cues and the motivation of the user. In lab animals this is easy, when they register as attentive you give a treat.
I don't know what the positive and minus cues the device uses are, but chances are they don't motivate a 9 year old the way a tasty cereal nugget motivates a gerbil. You'd almost have to resort to negative feedback (electro-shock or loud beeps) on negative cues to get results. Not that I'm advocating that for my cousin Jeff or anything...
- I settled down long enough to write this and have now collected far too much dust. Damn Dust.
Check out www.peakachievement.com for a better scientifc explanation. NeuroTech is trying for patents on a device that can detect when your mind is focusing so they must be serious.
"Critics of video games have claimed that such toys have contributed to short attention spans and lack of focus in children. "
I don't know what games they have been playing but even a game like Resident Evil much less a game real-time strategy games, or many others, I think that games actually tend to increase attention span. Because games now for the most part make you think throughout the game, unless it's like quake and most people will play that for a long period of time.
"...the target audience is kids who have trouble concentrating or sitting still to do their homework, have little motivation or are hyperactive. "
Its great that they have finally solved how to fix this, but how do you know that the child wants to play the game it doesn't sound like much fun to me.
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
- Take 1024 9-year old prodigies,
- fit them all with this helmet,
- sit them in front of Saddams 2000 PlayStationS2's,
- boot the consoles with Linux,
- wire them together in a Beowolf cluster,
all of this to play the perfect game of Pitfall 2.
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
You mean it'll steal my soul?
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
And the gamma band (25-40 Hz)?? What about the gamma band ??
The one really invoked in attention ??
Truly, claims that anyone understands if or how a toy like this might work are mere pie in the sky. We'd need to understand how attention worked before we could train it using EEG waves that demonstrate at best a very weak noisy reflection of SOME but certainly not MOST brain events,
In animal experiments people recorded EEG in the 1930s and 1940s as soon as amplifier technology began being applied to Neuroscience. Then in 1943 a researcher named Galambos (famous for co-discovering echo-location in bats) saw that using very small electrode tip exposures allowed recording from single neurons.
This breakthrough led the animal researchers to all but throw away EEG as a useful tool, although there are tons of human data still. But the problems with the EEG are several. First, it only reflects a vector averaging of many million neurons and synaptic currents. And it only reflects the dot product of that average with a radial vector.
Researchers estimate about 100 neurons in one area of the brain would be sufficient to carry the information in a percept, with perhaps 5, possilby as many as 10, brain areas involved. Such things are immeasurable by EEG. The things that are measurable are the oscillating features of brain processing, which could for all we know be epiphenomenonological. Or not. We really don't know yet. But the studies of the signals carried by single neurons clearly bear close relation to brain processing, and have been very difficult to relate to EEG-type monitoring.
It picks up electromegnetic variances (field potentials,) at various points on the skull. If you buy the rest of the model&math, it works like seismographs do at depicting the inside of inside of the earth except that its depicting electrical disturbances.
Having been through an "evoked potential" test, I can tell you that it can be done but its still at a very crude stage of interpretation.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
As the previous poster says, the brain seems to operate differently at different frequencies. The idea of binaural beats is to 'trick' your brain into a steady oscillation at a particular level.
I don't really know if this is a placebo or not (could be the white noise alone would have similar effect I guess), but it works really well for me.
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I remember a project in Sinclair User or similar almost 20 years ago which used alpha wave levels (picked up by a modified towelling headband... well, it was the 80s) to steer a little blob (give it a break, it *was* a ZX81) over horizontally-scrolling 'jumps'. You learnt to concentrate to guide the blob safely through the course.
I have heard that researchers are looking into a tool such as this one to train kids to deal with ADD and ADHD. Not sure how helpful it would be, but anything would be better than the automatic prescription of Ritalin.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
The sensors contain a simple solution that has been tested.
Find more here
This is old news, Tom Collura has been making and selling a less slick version of this home EEG training protocol for years. And it runs on Linux. http://www.brainmaster.com Its just biofeedback, in and out of 'popularity' since the 70's. I used to have a set up for it on my Apple iie.
if you watch almost every multiplayer game on the net, there's a sizable minority of players that wouldn't even register on an EEG.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
For freakish reasons I was admitted to the intensive-care unit at the local hospital while I was a freshman in college, and my thoughtful roommates brought me some flowers conveniently wrapped in a "vase" made up of a rolled-up issue of Penthouse. Sitting in the hospital all day is pretty boring, and I was repeatedly tempted to open up the magazine and start, um, you know, reading the articles. But somehow the knowledge that electrocardiogram equipment was transmitting my heartbeat in real time to the nurses' station outside my door presented a bit of a hurdle to my plans for entertaining myself: Every time I contemplated leafing through the magazine, I started wondering how the nurses would react if they suddenly saw my heart rate jump from maybe 60 beats per minute to 120 or so. I had visions of a klaxon going off and a whole team of doctors and nurses rushing in to man the crash cart, only to realize that the "Code Blue" was actually just me checking out some blue pictures. Of course, I know that crash carts are generally used when your heart *stops*, but that minor detail didn't do much to reduce the sensation that I was indeed attached to a Porn Alarm(TM).
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
reading about the product I noticed a very odd thing at least in my opnion. It seems to rely on sending your kids brain information to some internet site. Now I see no reason for this why cant a local protfolio be created, then if you read deeper they sugest and provide to you an online way of keeping track of your kids progress in school etc... seems like alot of information to be giving to some unkown company especialy since I didnt see any privacy statement about the information(but I might have missed that)
Sam and Blakestah are pretty much correct in this being an EEG type device. The Play Attention is one of several such devices used in ADDS and related treatments. This partcular device uses the helmet to quickly and easily position the electrodes. Other systems have to strap them on. Most use some conductive gel as well (messes up the hair a bit, especially if you already got gel and spikes!)
a lBackground
Generally when you are concentrating on the task at hand your brain settles into some rythms. The systems monitor how long/well you hit the marks. Some systems, like those from NeuroCybernetics use the brainwaves to control video games. The more you conentrate or hit the right frame of mind, the better your scores.
More background and company links can be found at:
http://vr.isdale.com/AlternativeIO_Links.htm#Neur
The brain is amazingly adaptable and capable of learning. It can even learn to improve its own performance, if it is shown what to change. By making information available to the brain in real-time about how it is functioning, and asking it to make adjustments, it can do so. The games challenge the trainee to maintain this "high-performance," alert and attentive state. Gradually, the brain learns and the brain retains the new skill.
All software of this kind must spend time "learing" what the hosts brainwave patterens are for different "events". Without the ability to single out and tag the specific brainwave patteren that indicates "paying attention" the software is worthless. I worked on a GUI for a piece of software like this 4 or 5 years ago. The software built a "map" of the brain with pattern to event relationships. After a LONG LONG LONG period of training you could type slowly without using the keyboard or your fingers! Kind of fun. Too slow and too inaccurate to be useful.
"People need reset buttons"
I did some work with similar technology doing postgraduate work at USU. Here's how it works.
When the brain is active, it gives out tiny amounts of charged particles known as bosuns. The harder a part of the brain is working, the more concentrated the bosuns. So what you do is you take a nice, non-conductive material like a plastic helmet and the you coat it with silicone (watch out, that stuff is carcinogenic) Then you dope the silicone with an acidic mixture of carbonated water, concentrated orange juice, citric acid, apartame, potassium benzoate, citrus pectin, potassium citrate, caffeine, gum arabic, natural flavors, brominated vegetable oil, yellow number 5 and erythorbic acid. Then you place a zinc and a copper electrode in each of the doped patches. IBM did a lot of the heavy lifting on this and they call it a silicone on insulator, plastic grid array. When a bosun interacts with a part this network, it generates a small electrical charge that can be measured. If you use a fine enough network and a little uzbekistanium (to reduce signal leak) you can determine the location and intensity of brainwave activity. This has a lot of potential.
--Shoeboy
It's probably monitoring EM waves radiated by your brain.
Unfortunately, you probably can't get much information out of it - it mostly looks like noise. Interpreting it would be at least as difficult as building a TEMPEST device - that is, if we had complete design schematics of the brain. Otherwise it's orders of magnitude harder.
However, there are some interesting things you can do, using Fourier analysis. Studies have shown that the predominant frequency of waves coming off can reflect the state of mind of the wearer:
The two common ways to explore these mind states are meditation and drugs, although often a combination of both.
This helmet could be an incredibly useful tool for amateur psychonauts/meditators for monitoring meditation and/or drug experiences. You could also build a biofeedback device to help you reach the lower states with it, or a lucid dreaming device.
Sounds like a great toy for a hacker with an interest in the mind!
As scary as it sounds I'm sure there are plenty of companies who would love to have their programmers strapped into these things.
PHB #1: Uh-oh looks like programmer #17 is daydreaming again.
PHB #2: Release the hounds!
Hey, nobody ever said English was logical; just memorize it and get on with your life. - Paul Brians
Ok, there are a few things which are troublesome here, which no one seems to have acknowledged. First, the technology, which I do know off the top of my head, is EEG Electro-Encephalo-Gram, and Nasa did/does use it. the problem is, EEG is the analogous to poking about in a goat's innards. the same technology (little electrodes on your head) is used in the much more fruitful ERP (event related potential research). However this involves a rigourous experimental design, and a computer to breakdown, usually fourier transforms, the signals in response to specific stimuli in the millisecond range. Additionally, you need someone who can understand the data (sorry, a computer can't do this yet), this person need to know enough about neuroanatomy and cognition to decide just how meaningful the results are. for example, these folks The Sackler Institute . To honestly expect to be able to teach your kids to focus by having them play video games with an 800$ helmet? It is really quite sad actually. Basically, the people and technology involved in meaningfully researching in this domain are a not going to come with this helmet, which in effect is pricey, do-it-yourself phrenology .
It works by harnessing parents' guilt, combined with a rationalization of letting their kids play all day long -- these forces are then converted into $899.
Umm
It's PASSIVELY scanning the brainwaves
theres no side effects of using it in the same way that theres no side effects of having your photo taken, it just picks up what radiation (in the very general sense of the word) your brain already gives out.