I did not realize that a simple non-invasive EEG could get such detailed information from the motor cortex. Apparently a Japanese University (Only available in Japanese) has created an EEG capable enough to receive incredibly detailed information about the motor cortex state. They are using this information to control an avatar in the ever popular Second Life:
When you think about walking forward, your avatar walks forward. When you think about moving your left arm, your avatars left arm will move, etc. etc. Since I do not read Japanese very well I do not know how any of this works, but I do know that I want to build one of these things. Luckily there is an open source hardware project to help us do just that: OpenEEG
Of course I am not much of a gamer, and I can not think what else an able bodied person could use this for… Except maybe using it as a mouse so I could move my cursor while keeping both hands on the keyboard. That does seem a little overkill though.
Building the EEG seems simple enough, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin deciphering the signal. I would probably create a software neural network and train it to interpret my brain patterns. That way adding new functionality could be done fairly easily. Also I rather like the idea of a comprehensible software neural network interpreting the practically incomprehensible hardware networks of our brains. But what could I do with this new found power? Maybe remote control a robot to get me a beer from the fridge. Now that would be science!
