5 INCREDIBLE - AND REAL - MIND-CONTROL APPLICATIONS

Five Incredible - and Real - Mind-Control Applications 
By Brian Handwerk, National Geographic News, 29 August 2013.

Scientists achieved the first remote human-to-human brain interface this week, when Rajesh 

Rao sent a brain signal over the Internet that moved the hand of colleague Andrea Stocco - 

even though Stocco was sitting all the way across the University of Washington's campus.

First remote human-to-human brain interface. Source: University of Washington.

Using one human brain to direct another person's body via the Internet was an amazing 

breakthrough. But other feats of mind control are already realities, particularly in the realm 

of human machine interfaces (HMIs).

Here are some amazing examples of what our brains can already do.

1. Compose and Play Music

The MiND Ensemble

Yes, music composition always took place in the brain. But now musicians might be able to 

eliminate the need for tools and interfaces like sheet music - or even playing an instrument -

 by simply creating music directly with their thoughts.

Electroencephalography (EEG) headwear devices record the electric signals that are produced

 when the brain is at work and can connect them wirelessly to a computer. Their wearers can also 

train their minds to associate a set of EEG brain signals with a specific task.

For example, thinking about pushing a button on the computer screen produces a brainwave 

pattern that computer software can then recognize and associate with that task.

To make music, such thoughts are associated with notes or sounds to create a language of 

musical thought that's produced directly from the brain. With this established, users can simply 

think musical scores to life and play them via the computer.

MiND Ensemble World Premiere Performance from Robert Alexander on Vimeo.

For an example of the way the mind can create music and other forms of art, check out the 

MiND ensemble (Music in Neural Dimensions) from the University of Michigan [see also above video].

2. Screen Mobile Phone Calls

Necomimi Cat Ears. Source: Necomimi.

Like a tough personal secretary, Ruggero Scorcioni's Good Times app filters the incoming calls of 

busy mobile phone users by simply monitoring the state of the user's brain.

Earlier this year, Scorcioni won an AT&T Mobile App Hackathon with the iOS app, which uses 

the cuddlyNecomimi Cat Ears brainwave-reading headset to monitor brain activity and reroute 

calls to voicemail when it perceives that the user's brain is busy with other tasks. If the user's 

brain is in a receptive state, it lets the call through.

With US$30,000 in Hackathon prize money in hand, Scorcioni is fine-tuning his prototype, 

which he views as a first step in the way our brain states might directly control mobile devices and

 our individual environments. Someday it might enable more brain-driven mobile device features that 

require no user input, like his Good Tunes concept, which would read brainwaves and then play 

music best matching the wearer's personal preferences for their current brain state.

3. Create a 3-D Object

Emotiv EPOC neuroheadset. Source: Emotiv.

Can wishing for something make it so? Well, not quite. But a Chilean company has announced the

 first object to be created by thought alone - paired with the growing power of the latest 3-D 

printing machines.

George Laskowsky, the chief technical officer of the Santiago-based startup Thinker Thing, 

created the first-ever such object in January 2012.

The Thinker Thing system employs an Emotiv EPOC EEG headset to map its wearer's brainwaves. 

Then the company's own software, called Emotional Evolutionary Design, displays "building 

block" shapes on a computer screen.

From a basic beginning, the shapes change and "evolve," while the user's emotional positive 

and negative reactions to each change are monitored by the headset. As the software processes 

brain feedback, the well-received shapes and changes are kept and expanded, while the disliked 

ones fade away. The process is repeated until a final object is produced according to the 

thought preferences of the designer.

The company's Monster Dreamer project gave school kids the opportunity to use the 

software to create the monster of their dreams, or nightmares, in a matter of minutes.

4. Drive a Wheelchair - And a Car

RIKEN thought-controlled wheelchair, via GadgetLite.

For the disabled, the ability to move about using the power of their minds could be life changing. 

To that end, scientists have worked for years on wheelchairs and other devices that could restore 

mobility to those who had lost control of their own bodies but still had sharp minds.

By 2009, Japanese scientists at Toyota and research lab RIKEN announced a thought-

controlled wheelchair that used an EEG sensor cap to capture brainwaves and turn them 

into directional commands in just 125 thousandths of a second - with 95 percent accuracy.

At Lausanne, Switzerland's Federal Institute of Technology, scientists have added "shared 

control" to the concept. Their chair's software analyzes the surrounding area's cluttered 

environment and 

blends that information with the driver's brain commands to avoid problems like collisions with 

objects.

The system also eases the strain of command because users needn't continually instruct the 

chair - the software processes a single directional command and automatically repeats it as 

often as needed to navigate the space.

German engineers at the Free University of Berlin have attempted to take this concept on 

the open road with a car that can be partially controlled by the driver's thoughts. The team 

took an autonomous Volkswagen Passat, one of the emerging breed of driverless vehicles, and 

outfitted it with a computer system and software designed to work with Emotiv's commercially 

available EEG brain-scanning headset.

The BrainDriver, via Wired.

Drivers were trained to produce recognizable thought commands, like "turn left," by 

manipulating a virtual cube on a screen. The on-board computer then analyzed and converted 

those thoughts to commands recognized by the car itself each time they were thought by the 

driver. (See the successful results here.)

The "BrainDriver" application is not roadworthy yet, the team cautions on their website. "But 

on the long run, human machine interfaces like this could bear huge potential in combination 

with autonomous driving - for example, when it comes to decide which way you want to take 

on a crossroad, while the autonomous cab drives you home."

5. "Bionic" Limbs

Image Source: DARPA

In some instances, human machine interfaces are becoming part of the human body. One

 new prosthetic even provides a sense of "touch" like that of a natural arm, because it interfaces

 with the wearer's neural system by splicing to residual nerves in the partial limb.

The prosthetic sends sensory signals to the wearer's brain that produce a lifelike "feel," allowing 

users to operate it by touch rather than by sight alone. This ability enables tasks many take 

for granted, like removing something from inside a grocery bag, and knowing how hard to grip items 

with the prosthetic hand.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University, now working with the Defense Advanced 

Research Projects Agency (DARPA), developed the prosthetic, which can be seen in action here 

and was unveiled in May 2013. DARPA is a leader in the development of advanced prosthetics, in

 part because more than 2,000 U.S. Service members have undergone amputations since 2000.

Another DARPA-backed prosthetic arm flips this script by efficiently transmitting information from

 brain to arm, rather than vice versa, through a technique called targeted muscle re-innervation. 

The procedure rewires nerves from amputated limbs to enable more natural brain control of the

 prosthetic - and make possible some amazing abilities.

Screengrab YouTube

In this video taken at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, former Army Staff Sgt. 

Glen Lehman [pictured above], who was wounded in Iraq, demonstrates his ability to 

manipulate the arm with his mind, drink coffee, and bounce a tennis ball with a prosthetic limb.

 In some cases, experts say, prosthetics can already offer more functionality than heavily

 damaged human limbs.

[Source: National Geographic News. Edited. Some images added.]