Brain Games: can you read my mind?

"What do neuroscientists--who have been using EEG for decades--think of these companies' attempts to convert a research tool into a gaming technology? The ones I spoke with are uniformly skeptical that the devices rely on brain activity alone. (Neurosky owns up to this, while Emotiv's president, Tan Le, insists that the telekinesis function uses only electrical signals emanating from the brain.) Gerwin Schalk, a research scientist at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, NY, is developing EEG-based systems that allow severely paralyzed people to interact with computers. He says that with his second-generation system, it takes several hours of training to control one degree of freedom of motion--what you need to lift a rock in the Emotiv video game. More extensive practice is needed to develop multidimensional control. "If you wanted to pick up signals to move a spaceship left or right, it would be much easier for a person to do it with facial expression than with brain activity," says Schalk." (Emily Singer, Technology Review)

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