May 11--Fly toy helicopters with your mind. Be a DJ and shift musical tracks
based on how you feel. Wiggle robotic cat ears by increasing your state of calm.
Astonishing advances in the ability to harness brain waves have made the
fantastic notion of moving and controlling objects with the mind possible. Now
neuroscientists are grappling with another challenge: Find a "killer app" that
will demonstrate the true potential of tapping into brain waves and ignite the
neurotechnology revolution.
Medicine, perhaps? Education? Try video games.
Over the last decade, video games have helped push cutting-edge technologies
such as sensor-based computing -- Nintendo's Wii -- and gesture-based computing
-- Microsoft's Kinect -- into the mainstream. Neurotech boosters hope video
games can do the same for their budding industry.
In a sign of how serious they are about courting the video gaming industry, the
two camps staged the NeuroGaming Conference & Expo last week in San Francisco,
the first event of its kind, according to organizers.
"Now is the time to bring these communities together," said Zack Lynch, the
conference organizer and founder of the Neurotech Industry Organization. "We
want to start the conversation to see where we could actually take these
technologies and to begin to create new experiences that really push the
boundaries of reality."
The event drew 300 people, including entrepreneurs, neuroscientists and venture
capitalists, anyone organizers believe could help spark the ideas that could
create a full-blown neurotech industry.
The ability to read brain waves has been around at least since the 1920s through
a technique for capturing the brain's electrical impulses called
electroencephalography, or EEG, by attaching sensors to the head. Now, brain
waves can be read by small sensors that continue to become more powerful and
less expensive.
At the same time, sensors of various kinds are being built into all sorts of
gadgets such as smartphones and health monitoring wristbands such as those made
by Jawbone. Observers say this is making people more comfortable with the idea
of wearing technology that includes sensors that collect tremendous amounts of
the most intimate data.
"I think it's a really exciting time right now," said Anders Grunnet-Jepsen,
director of advanced technology and perceptual computing at Intel Corp. "I think
the public is ready for exploring other types of sensors."
Displays at the exhibition hall, where 18 companies showed off their latest
applications, gave a glimpse of how far neurotech has come.
In one corner, San Jose-based NeuroSky let people use one of its brain wave
reading headsets (some of which cost less than $100) to fly the Puzzlebox Orbit,
a small helicopter developed by a partner, that goes up and down based on the
level of the person's focus and level of relaxation. Another NeuroSky partner,
Neurowear, has used the company's technology to create Necomimi, a set of cat
ears that wiggle based on the person's emotional state.
One booth over, Richard Warp, a composer, brought in his NeuroDisco system,
which used a headset made by Emotiv of San Francisco. A person straps on the
headset and then controls the mix of music based on shifting his or her levels
of excitement, frustration, or calm.
The closest thing to an actual video game on display in the exhibit hall was
