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Brain Wave Videogame Championship

Posted by Zonk on from the he-can-hear-your-smack-talk-with-his-brains dept.

holy_calamity writes "The Science Museum in London is hosting a Mindball Championship next week. Pairs of opponents wired up to electroencephalogram (EEG) machines use their brain waves to push a ball towards an opponent. The challenge is that to win, the players have to relax — the ball only responds to theta waves (4-8 Hz) associated with drowsiness or alpha waves (8-12 Hz) associated with being relaxed. " The winner gets the title of Britain's Most Relaxed Mind. So ... good luck, lazy people.

2 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"Theta waves"... by EvilIdler · · Score: 3, Informative

    Those are 'theta waves', not 'thetans that wave at you', silly!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theta_wave

    The five types are alpha, beta, gamma, delta and theta.

    Gamma being the one not exactly recognised by most scientists, as it supposedly is the
    40Hz+ range where precognition and other weirdness happens ;)

    The four commonly accepted ranges are delta at the very low 1-4Hz range - practically
    comatose deep sleep, theta at 4-8Hz (or 7, according to some sources) - meditative states,
    alpha at 6-12Hz - regular relaxed states, and beta at 12Hz+ being alertness and concentration.

  2. Re:wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    > IIRC, the movie Firefox is about an airplane (I think called Firefox), that is controlled by the mind.

    Yep. Clint Eastwood plays an American pilot who's hired by the US government to steal a Soviet plane. The Firefox features a thought-controlled weapons system, and to successfully take advantage of everything the plane has to offer while high-tailing it out of Russia, he must "think in Russian", as opposed to merely thinking in English and translating to Russian, as one would do with a voice-activated system.