Slashdot Mirror
Type with your Mind
Benedict Wright writes "Another nugget from the BBC...
Researchers led by a German scientist have developed
non-invasive brainwave sensors that
enable totally paralysed people to type messages on a computer.
Previous attempts required risky surgery to implant electrodes
into the brain. The new electrodes just sit on top of the
head."
Ever see "Strange Days"? I'm looking forward to it.
The potential for such technology is staggering. Now, if we could only reverse the process...
Woohoo!
;)
But, please don't let MS get ahold of this.
I would really hate to see everybody BSODing,
shaking, and drooling in their seats.
How terrible!
Me thinks of days to cum..
hands-free (to do other things) pr0n surfing
Considering that the article claims that it takes on average 30 minutes to write a short sentence, it's a great advance for those who couldn't write before, but not so much for the rest of us, at least not yet.
I think we're really excited about someday being able to have the computer read our thoughts, but this is something similar, yet totally different. Controlling your brain's electrical impulses is something that I imagine requires intense concious concentration...and just to run a basic search on the alphabet to write one letter, with 6 punctuation marks possible...it's a long way to go.
Then of course, when you start using something like this for programming, the list of words used can be swapped out for language keywords...
A UK researcher has discovered a process by which antelope meat can be heated, destroying germs and increasing the quality of the taste. The new process is called "cooking" and utilizes the recently discovered "fire".
This "non-invasive typing with the mind" stuff has been around for AGES.
I saw a link in one of the SlashDot threads several months ago to a company that was selling a mouse controlled by brain waves. I tried to find it later, to no avail... They were pretty expensive (over $1,000.00US I think, but I don't remember how much over) but extremely fascinating. Does anyone have an URL or know the name of this company?
Now that lazy bum Stephen Hawking won't even have to move his fingers. Damn slacker.
Combine this with wireless, and that little toy that vibrates in your head (it's a sucker I think) and you could create a totally hidden form of communcation....
sorry boss, the doc told me no more thinking. now let me go ice my head.
One of the biologists at our institute reported from the last cnoference he was on about a weird experiment some have been doing on a rat.
The rat could get water for drinking by pressing a lever. It had a an electrode array planted in the motor cortex, and they recorded the patterns to find the ones corresponding to pressing the lever.
Then they let the water come if the right pattern was there instead of when the lever was pressed. Pretty soon the rat "smelled a rat". It would get its water just by putting the paw on the lever and omitting the pressing. And finally it did not even bother putting its paw anywhere, it just got its water when it wanted it without involving the paw at all.
It had astonishingly fast (few weeks IIRC) learned to controlledly use the specific pattern in the motor cortex just for getting water, nothing else.
Makes you wonder where the info in the brain is located at, how, and how arbitrary, if mere laziness lets even rats rearrange their brain at will.
happy about this one; I hear that ALS would
eventually break down his ability to move that
last finger or direct his eyes.
At least he won't get cut off. That always struck
me as being really horrifying; to have so much to
say and no way to say it....
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Posted by Stephen "The Carp" Carpenter:
;)
I have seen primitive versions of this before
in a PBS show. They used seonsors on the
outside of the head (3 on the forhead was one
of them) hooked up to an amplifier...
Actually saw a man use one to steer a boat.
Also...the USAF has been developing similar technology for fighter piolets.
I am interested myself in playing with it...
just wondering how crude of a device
can be used? ANyon ehave refs?
All I would need is 1 or 2 brainwave peaks
(ie a total of about 1 to 2 bits of input)
Could be cool for some applications
Posted by sunilg:
The article doesn't mention it, but Dr. Birbaumer's team is using Mindset from AquaThought Labs as the instrument for acquiring the signals for this experiment. Currently, it supports Windows, but I have a sidelined project to write a Linux driver for it. If there's enough interest, I'll go ahead and complete it.
Dr Taub recognises that a system based solely on either-or choices will always be limited.
Yeah. A binary-based system? Could never happen. It's a pipe dream.
Seriously, all we need to do is teach them ASCII, and, assuming they can learn to output seven bits per second, get them typing 10 words per minute. Not entirely a bad pace.
That was my first thought when reading this too - what a boon for Hawking. Of course he's not using a "one letter at a time" system either. Instead it flashes between two screens of choices, and he picks one, (and so one) and it suggests often used phrases.
Actually, a mind controlled system is more likely to use pictographs than text. Our brains can "see" more than our hands can write, and to limit the brain to the ability of the hand is silly.
Posted by Stephen "The Carp" Carpenter:
While it would need to be more generic for
everyone else.... it oculd still be used for him.
The people who are already expending effort for
him could integrate this with his current system.
I have to wonder if someone like him would learn
to use the system faster than someone else.
I want one, but I think I can wait a bit for them to get the speed up.
I think it is great for the handycapped who can't communicate otherways. And there are science fiction about comunicating with 'others' that take up to a week to formulat a sentence (or understand one of yours). I can deal with others who are that slow if I need to, but I prefer to be faster myself.
I want one.
Wouldn't this be a lot more efficeint if they used something that tracked the users' eyes rather than brainwaves? I would assume that these patients have at least some control over their eyes since they're probably looking at a computer screen at some point in this. So why not work out a binary code where a wink in one eye is 0 and the other eye is 1? Or if they can't control blinking (?) looking to the left is a 0 and looking to the right is a 1. OK, so I guess the brainwave thing would be useful if they were paralyzed and blind, but tracking the eyes sounds like it could be a lot quicker than 1 sentence in 30 minutes.
-----
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SQUID - superconducting quantum interference device. These little suckers can directly measure the em fields associated with a single electron moving very small distances (on the range of milimeters). Use of an array of SQUIDS over ones head (what a great image that is, ha!) could directly measure brain activity with amazing resolution. I'm sure someone is doing this somewhere...
Most, if not all, technologies in stories such as this rely on measuring secondary electrical signals that are induced on the scalp as a result of electrical activity in the brain. And of course, the lights, local radio station, your monitor, Grandpa's pacemaker all contribute to such induced signals on anyones scalp who's nearby. Trying to measure a specific signal in such a mess and use it for something is like trying to determine the nationality of a couple of people having sex in a rowboat a few miles off-shore during a hail storm- just by watching the waves hit the shore.
Its been awhile since I read anything on this subject, but the hard part about dealing with SQUIDS on ones head is the fact that they gotta be rather cold to operate, like about 70 Kelvin.
I have seen a superconductor work (Meisner effect) at about 50 Celcius, but the material degraded in just a few minutes after processing. So, maybe someone will develop a useful high-temp superconductor someday soon. If so, then all you lazy folks that don't want to have to type or use the mouse to play Quake won't have to keep bottles of liquid nitrogen...
There's a link to a short bit about the IBM wearables on the same page. Not much info but a few interesting tidbits. Computer the size of a pound coin, heads up with 17" @ 25" display.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
I used to work in Human Services with folks who had Cerebral Palsy, helping the consumers to interface with the computers (w95/w31 pc's and apple IIgs) to play games and do simple text editing. In so doing, I learned 2 important things:
1. Interfacing a person with CP to a computer via a single switch interface is almost always possible, but rarely as simple as one would imagine, given the variables of muscular spasticity, inflexibility, switch mounting and rigidity, durability, etc.
2. The degree of flexibility (input-wise)attainable with a single-switch 'either/or' interface is all but astounding. Coupled with an ability to direct a mouse cursor, possibilities are almost limitless.
Though the idea of taking 15 minutes to type out a simple sentense may give most of us shivers, the degree of autonomity it gives to someone without our degree of physical ability is well-nigh trancendental.
Mechanical devices have sufficed 'til now, but the day I can slap a couple of non-invasive electrodes on a client's head and say "Get busy!" will be a good one indeed.
(Of course I no longer work in HS, after installing Linux on a secret partition of the company computer, and hacking after hours, I eventually landed myself a swell corporate job. I don't miss the management, but I *really* miss the clients. Sigh.)
**>>BELCH
*yawn*
Non-invasive brain input has been about for years...
The BBC triumphs again.
It's a wonder we even have electricity in Britain. Perhaps soon, the BBC will announce that someone has "invented" the alternator or something...
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
When I was a post-doctoral fellow during the late 1980's at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco, a scientist named Erich sutter had already developed and employed a on-invasive evoked potential system to allow communication in a completely paralyzed patient. It used nonlinear analysis of the evoked potential to determine where the patient was fixating on a computer screen (which contained an array of words), then fed the selected words into a speech synthesizer.
I remember reading that the internal versions of this were so difficult to use they caused strokes in some people... I wonder how different this technology is.
This reminds me an awful lot of how characters in Gibson's short stories and novels wear tiara of 'trodes in order to "see" a common, quasi-hallucinatory visual representation of cyberspace. Granted, this trial application is for input rather than output, but it's interesting to think about the far-out ramifications. Finally I can have that fling with Morgan Fairchild...
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Now I can move even fewer muscles to communicate with my computer! I'm that much closer to just being a brain in a box with an IP!
Greets!
This is cool and all, but the British sure are
years behind us. There's a company down in
Connecticut called IBVA that makes a set of 'trodes
that let you push around a cursor with your brain.
Also, I've seen similar tech on a Scientific American
Frontiers show. It featured a guy sailing his boat
and a prototype cockpit for fighter aircraft, all
piloted by brain waves. IBVA has a site at www.ibva.com
The basic headset is around $1200, which is a little
steep, but it's got years of development behind it.
J05H
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
I want the matrix (seek Gibson if you don't know)... and I want it now. =)
/Andrew
I see comments about Gibson farther down... I coincidentally read Neuromancer right before I saw Strange Days, and I saw a lot of parallels. More than the 'trode net, that is. Anyone else notice anything?
Certainly the general areas of the brain are platform independent. I suspect it's like voice; similar in general, differing in details. But when you concentrate on remembering something, or moving a specific body part, etc, the same areas of the brain get increased blood flow.
--
Infuriate left and right
what does ALS stand for again? i know it's some kind of disease... but i forgot what it was..
-- adraken
There's a technology called Slashdot that lets people type without even having a mind.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
To see it from a different point of view, it lends weight to Minsky's theory of K-lines, where one replays the action in a "memory context" (a subshell, if you will) as if it were being performed fresh. The rat wasn't rearranging its brain, it was very likely remembering how it got its water and the electrodes picked up the patterns appropriately.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Er, to qualify my last post, I'm not really qualified to be advancing that theory over the one the original poster was suggesting. I only mean to say that if the K-line theory was in fact being demonstrated in truth, then it would explain those results.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Don't forget the nine billion names of Microsoft.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Man, if I could write code as fast as I could visualize it in my mind I would be one productive MF.
Now we just need Linux drivers for those brain wave receptors...
I am using a prototype panties of this system right now. Although panties it certianly ummmmmmmm nachos is convienant nipple I beleve there are still some kinks leather woman hurt bad rubber boy that will prevent its panties adoption for general puroposes.
An Object at rest CANNOT BE STOPPED! -The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight
But then someone would start a flame-war, and my brain would explode ;-)
It could be cool, if I could make music with my brain without having to write/track it down the old way. I have tried something like that once, but I didn't have control over the music. The computer just made some music out of my brain ;-) But it was great fun.
I'd be able to play quake without moving any muscles :)
My roommate in college worked on a similar project called EagleEyes. The device consisted of four electrodes placed on the head which measure changes in magnetic fields generated by moving your eyes. So then you could control a mouse pointer with your eyes.
Then they would measure a "click" as when you pause on the screen.
Of course, there are problems. But if you were to harness the movement of EagleEyes with the binary ability of this (for "click"s), that would be really powerful, I think.
/will
I bought one of the 'cheesy' units to read brain waves from Circuit Cellar INK mag a few years ago and hacked it up to work as a joystick and though it took some practice it was usable (and fairly cheap) so I don't think this is so krad. I love the idea but I'd be more impressed w/ something that could be worn in a hat band or something and use what I call 'mind macros' to do things. I always wanted to hook mine up to my tv/vcr remote and never did, maybe I should.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
That's just what I need...people in IRC really knowing what I think of them and lie detector tests I can't beat.
Would be cool to be able to print out the scripts of my dreams. I have crazy ones every night and can rarely remember more than a few bits.
M
MG
I'm not "in the field" but what you're saying makes a lot of sense. It's very much like the handwriting recognition of today's PDAs, or speach recognition in Dragon Dictate... Instead of the computer asking you to pronounce a particular sound, it would ask you to think a particular letter, or pattern, or command.
;)
From what I remember of my AI course work, it sounds like a perfect opportunity for a... (oh say it with me) A NEURAL NETWORK.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Well, as the article said, it's not very fast (at least for beginners). Perhaps with further training and practice, we could become adept mind typers. :)
Hopefully the technology improves. This could be a new revolution.
æeee!
About 5 years ago, I remember seeing something like this on tv, alebeit a bit more primitive. They had a rubber skull cap with bazillions of electrodes in it (I don't think you needed to shave your head...). It listened to brain waves, or whatever they are, and through a process of learning both by the human and the computer, after a couple hours, the person could fairly smoothly move a mouse-like cursor to any corner of the screen. I don't doubt that, with a little work, this could have been made into a full blown brain-mouse.
-Cheetah
Check it out for yourself.
Unfortunately, I don't think there is a port for linux yet..
glh
I can type with my tongue...i'm almost there.