Care to Read my Brain Waves?

Serina Deen, who has a background in neuroscience research, is a 4th year medical student at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Here she describes how your brain waves could get involved in your gaming.

I remember back in my freshman year of college, sitting in a pitch black room the size of a closet, staring straight ahead of me at a screen with a blinking green light on it, while an infrared sensor hanging from the motorcycle helmet strapped on my head beamed into my eyes. Fraternity hazing, perhaps? No, just another undergraduate trying to make a buck by participating in a paid psych experiment. They told me at the end of the grueling hour that they were monitoring my concentration by tracking my eye movements, which were supposed to be vigilantly following the blinking green light (I have to admit, my eyes wandered a bit as I kept trying to steal glances at the clock).

Well, things have improved significantly since then. Now, they’re coming up with games that are supposed to actually read your brain waves to gauge your concentration…

Darth Vader, created by engineers at NeuroSky, for example. Imagine you’re dressed like Darth Vader- black mask, cape, light saber. Maybe a couple of us (ahem) might have already done so in our geekier past. Except this time, inside the black mask lies a sensor that touches your forehead and reads your
brain’s electrical impulses, which in turn lights up the saber that you’re holding while you’re concentrating. If your mind wanders, the wand goes dark. Imagine this type of technology being used to improve your golf game, or to pick certain songs on your ipod based on your mood. Children who play the race car game Gran Turismo with this technology, for example, can only reach maximum speed while they’re concentrating.

The technology is based on electroencephalography, or EEG. It’s been used for decades in medicine, for example to detect if someone is having a seizure. But it’s just recently been applied to the gaming industry. While the applications are just beginning to be hashed out, and some doubt their marketability, I’m holding out for a day when I can turn on my microwave using only my thoughts.