Positive Technology Journal

Via pasta & vinegar 

An article in The Economist about brain-controlled devices and games.

From the article:

At the moment, EEG's uses are mostly medical. Though the output of the electrodes is a set of crude brain waves, enough is now known about the healthy patterns of these waves for changes in them to be used to diagnose unhealthy abnormalities. Yet, because parts of a person's grey matter exhibit increased electric activity when they respond to stimuli or prepare for movements, there has always been the lingering hope that EEG might also manifest someone's thoughts in a machine-readable form that could be used for everyday purposes.

To realise that hope means solving two problems—one of hardware and one of software. The hardware problem is that existing EEG requires a helmet with as many as 120 electrodes in it, and that these electrodes have to be affixed to the scalp with a gel. The software problem is that many different types of brain waves have to be interpreted simultaneously and instantly. That is no mean computing task.