Brain wave of the future

A sound eruptsfirst a groan,then a woooo. The ball spins,slowly at first,then faster. Concentrate,concentrate. And then the ball rises inside the tube. Up it lifts,two inches,four inchesa foot! You giggle and your concentration is broken; the ghostly sound fades and the ball drops back into its nest with a gurgle. You have just controlled a physical object with your mind.

Competing mind-over-matter toys from Mattel and Uncle Milton Industries are coming this fall to a store near you. They are the first brain-computer interfaces to enter the consumer mainstream.
The question everyone has about these gizmos is whether they are parlour tricks like Magic 8 Balls or Ouija boards. Evidence in favour of them being for real is that some people are worse than others at controlling themcertainly not a marketing feature.

Lawyers and other multitaskers,for example,tend to have a terrible time focusing their brain waves,says Johnny Liu,of NeuroSky,the creator of the mind-over-matter headset. But there are those to whom controlling the device comes effortlessly and instantly,as if single-mindedness is the persons natural default position.
Nine years ago,scientists created the worlds first telekinetic monkey. Belle,a cute little owl monkey in the lab of Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University,was the first to control tangible objects,long distance,with her thoughts.

How do you make a monkey telekinetic? First you get her into a computer game. She knows that if a light suddenly shines on her screen and she moves her joystick left or right to hit it,she gets a drop of juice. Then the researchers drill a hole in her head. They take a device the size of a baby aspirin,out of which come many superfine wires,and lower it into Belles motor cortexthe portion of the brain that plans muscle movement. The object is to line up each wire with an individual neuron to detect its firing.

Then comes the big moment in telekinesis. When Belle resumes her game,the scientists put the signal from her brain on the Internet and pipe it 600 miles north to a robotic arm at MIT. Sure enough,it starts dancing like a ballerina in exactly the same fashion as Belles arm.

WORK is advancing rapidly. Four profoundly paralysed humans equipped with a BrainGate implant created by the biotech firm Cyberkinetics have demonstrated their ability,with just their thoughts,to check and send e-mail; turn televisions,lights and appliances on and off; and control a wheelchair. Monkeys equipped with brain-controlled artificial arms have learned how to guide food to their mouths. A monkey in Nicolelis lab recently controlled a humanoid robot in Japan. But the most spectacular work has centered on neural control of mechanical arms,hands and legs. The goal of a programme funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is to soon produce intelligent artificial limbs controlled by your nervous system that will allow you to pitch a fastball,thread a needle or play a piano.

AS A MIND-reading location,your forehead has only one significant advantage. Its a horrible place to get signals. But thats the only place most people do not have hair, says Stanley Yang,chief executive of NeuroSky. Hair is not conductive.

NeuroSky is in the forefront of turning brain-computer interfaces into cheap consumer items. Its selling brain-reading hardware and software headsets to all comersincluding Christmas competitors like Mattels $80 Mindflex and Uncle Miltons $130 Force Trainer,both of which involve levitating a ping-pong-like ball. NeuroSky has its sights set on providing brain-wave sensors for the automotive,health-care and education industries.

The prospect for mind controlling matter dates to 1875,when Richard Caton discovered that you could peer into the workings of the brain by detecting its electrical impulses. In 1929 came the first electroencephalographthe EEG machine.

NeuroSky gets the device to focus on the correct signals from the foreheadthat extremely noisy brain areafiltering out everything else. The sensors you are seeing today are first generation, says Yang. You have to wear it. The second generation can sense your brain waves and other bio-signals from a distance. Like sensors in your car seats that can go through clothes without touching you.

Yang wants the car to know if you are falling asleep. Or drunk. Or wishing the air conditioning would go on,or the music would play more softly. He is talking with the Japanese telephone company NTT DoCoMo about cellphones. Its brain lab has looked at over 300 mind-over-matter products,he says.
Joel Garreau,LATWP