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That's Using Your Head

Posted by michael on from the grey-matter dept.

broKenfoLd writes "In an earlier post, we looked at the future of Matrix-esque control over computers. In that article, monkeys got to play the games. Today at UW in Madison, WI, it's the humans who are playing video games just by thinking about it. While this is cool for us power gamers, it has many more impressive applications, including limb replacement."

4 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Significant Development? by fembots · · Score: 3, Informative

    At first I thought it was a dupe from this, but the article did mention - "Last month, researchers at Brown University reported on the technology's success in a 25-year-old quadriplegic from Massachusetts who was able to read e-mail, play video games, turn on lights, and change channels or adjust the volume on a TV."

    The final comment was "This is a significant development", but in what way?

    --
    Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
    1. Re:Significant Development? by raehl · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think he meant, how is the UW development (ooo, they can move the bar in pong!) significant comopared to the Brown development (He can read email!)

      I think the key difference is that the Brown electrodes were places IN the brain, while the UW electrodes were placed ON the brain, so it was less invasive.

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      paintball
  2. Re:I don't mean to be a hypocrite... by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 3, Informative
    This technology is not what people often think it is. There is no way it could be used for mind-reading or thought control in the forseeable future. We would have to understand the brain a LOT better than we do to even begin to think about these things, plus we would need interface technology a million times better than a few electrodes.

    Basically how this works is the brain adapts to the implanted electrodes, learning how to activate neurons in the right way such that a computer can detect the changes in electrical potential at the electrodes. The computer can't interpret the signals at all; it just reads potentials from the electrodes. What makes this interesting is that the brain is quite adaptable, and if the signals are used to control the inputs to a device the brain can learn to use the device much like an extra limb.

    It remains to be seen just how fine and complex the control can be and how much adaptation the brain can do; but I think the medical community has been way too conservative about this so far, and I am optimistic that once we learn the right places to put the electrodes and the right way to process the brain's signals, controlling mice/keyboards/game controllers/robot limbs will be a matter of a few implants and a year or two of training. The benefit to quadriplegics will be immesurable. For the rest of us, this technology is probably not very useful. Getting the implants and doing the training will be quite an ordeal, not something you'd do to get an edge in Counter-Strike (if it even would give you an edge at all).

    --
    main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
  3. Gibson's story by lastberserker · · Score: 3, Informative

    Dunno how it's connected to the "Forbidden Planet," but the development is 1:1 what is described in the "Dogfight" by William Gibson.

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    My other Beowulf cluster is... er...