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Sci-Fi Science Technology

Brain/Machine Interfaces Approaching Usefulness 129

Posted by Zonk from the working-brain-in-hand dept.
Gary writes with a link to a Wired article about a brain-machine interface that may eventually have practical purposes. Though right now it simply allows a user to move a train on a track by performing math in their head, someday it may result in more serious applications. "Honda, whose interface monitors the brain with an MRI machine like those used in hospitals, is keen to apply the interface to intelligent, next-generation automobiles. The technology could one day replace remote controls and keyboards and perhaps help disabled people operate electric wheelchairs, beds or artificial limbs. Initial uses would be helping people with paralyzing diseases communicate even after they have lost all control of their muscles. Since 2005, Hitachi has sold a device based on optical topography that monitors brain activity in paralyzed patients so they can answer simple questions - for example, by doing mental calculations to indicate 'yes' or thinking of nothing in particular to indicate 'no.'"
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Brain/Machine Interfaces Approaching Usefulness More

Brain/Machine Interfaces Approaching Usefulness

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  • Very Cool (Score:4, Interesting)

    by phantomcircuit ( 938963 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @12:44PM (#19610055) Homepage
    I'm looking forward to being able to write simply by thinking, typing slows me down soooo much.
    • While cool, this thing has a LOONNNGGGG way to go before it has many useful applications. Presently it can do a single on-off and is a huge head gear application. If it can montior different areas if the brain for Activity or no Activity, then you have maybe a half dozen on-off bits to make it do different things. Half a dozen bits is useful for some things, and in combination can make numbers, but if you have to do math to turn on bit one, and then think of a pretty scense to turn on bit two, and think

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KDan ( 90353 )
        It's not even that cool. Binary brain interfaces are lame. They've existed for quite a while too. The point of having a brain interface is not to be able to do stuff really slowly without moving your hands. The real point is to be able to significantly increase the bandwidth of communications between you and the computer. Imagine the full duplex bandwidth between your brain and your hand. Now imagine you had that kind of bandwidth with a computer. Suddenly, we'd switch the paradigm from one where computer s
        • You said what I wanted to say except I didn't want to be so harsh about it!! ;)

        • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          How about this: attach a biomechanical device to those high-bandwidth nerves in your wrist. It could use energy supplied by your body's own circulatory system to squeeze bits of meat. This would force the meat-blobs against an array of contacts, suspended above terminals by a dimpled rubber sheet, which could close electrical circuits. The computer would then interpret these as letters of the alphabet, or special commands.
    • "Brain typing" might not work so well for the average American male... "The evolution of microprocessors has been SEX known to follow Moore's Law when it comes to steadily increasing performance SEX over the years. This law suggests SEX that the complexity of an integrated circuit, with respect to minimum component SEX cost, doubles every 24 months. This dictum has generally proven SEX true since the early 1970s. From their humble SEX beginnings as the drivers for calculators, the continued increase..." (


    • Damn...... didn't work
    • You clearly need to switch to Dvorak. I don't use it because I'm not French, but I hear that you can type up to twice as fast as you can think.
      • Ummm . . . how exactly can one type faster than they can think? Unless we're talking about nonsensical mashing of keys. BFHoduighs vzlkSDjfsd ajklehfklsda jflasjkd hwsfhsj.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      I'm looking forward to being able to write simply by thinking, typing slows me down soooo much.

      The best part is that it could solve the problem of people typing without thinking.

    • I don't know about others, but I find that I pretty much type what I think in my IM chats. Even without brain-machine interfaces, this can be problematic as I've found many instances where the word I typed was not the word I consciously wanted. Many times I'll re-read my message and find that I've replaced whole words with synonyms or even swizzled sentences with equivalent, but different grammar. This is especially noticeable when I'm trying to quote someone verbatim and the error is very obvious.

      As for th

  • Captain Pike (Score:5, Funny)

    by Short Circuit ( 52384 ) <mikemol@gmail.com> on Friday June 22, 2007 @12:45PM (#19610063) Homepage Journal

    Since 2005, Hitachi has sold a device based on optical topography that monitors brain activity in paralyzed patients so they can answer simple questions - for example, by doing mental calculations to indicate 'yes' or thinking of nothing in particular to indicate 'no.'"
    I guess Captain Pike got stuck with an old model, dating all the way back to 2005...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Zeebs ( 577100 )
      <i> I guess Captain Pike got stuck with an old model, dating all the way back to 2005...</i>

      Even in the utopian future of Star Trek we still shaft our veterans.
    • I guess Captain Pike got stuck with an old model, dating all the way back to 2005...

      [Fry is in a Captain Pike-style life-support machine]
      Captain Zapp Brannigan: Do you understand the charges?
      Kif Kroker: One beep for yes, two beeps for no.
      [Fry beeps once]
      Captain Zapp Brannigan: Yes, so noted. Do you plead guilty?
      [Fry beeps twice]
      Captain Zapp Brannigan: Double yes. Guilty.

  • I want one (Score:4, Interesting)

    by UbuntuDupe ( 970646 ) * on Friday June 22, 2007 @12:46PM (#19610071) Journal
    I can't wait till I can buy one of these things. I figure with practice, you can increase the precision of your thought and thus the number of signals you can give. Conceivably, you'd be able to enter text as quickly as you can think it.

    Would increasing the use of your brain like this, to give commands, make you smarter in some way, as well?
    • That would probably require a shift in how we think. I tend to think in symbols/words, not in letters. There would still be a delay from me having to translate words to letter sequences in my head. (Same as typing...Granted, the mental interface would remove a physical limitation.)

      Personally, though, I'd find it more interesting to be able to communicate symbols to my computer, rather than letters. Programming would be a much more accessible task if people could actually think about the behaviors they wa
    • This is pretty cool but what happens when you think "sex" though -- I'm not so sure I could train my brain to avoid such thoughts.

      Maybe I wouldn't have to though...

      [Me thinking]:....
      [Fembot]: Honey, i have a headache, maybe later.
      [me]: doh

      Hmm on second thought, maybe the future isnt so bright

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pla ( 258480 )
      Would increasing the use of your brain like this, to give commands, make you smarter in some way, as well?

      Yes, in that one niche area.

      If you train it by doing long division in your head, for example, you would soon get very, very good at long division.

      Which actually raises another interesting question - It sounds like the interface works only because doing a "hard" problem causes a significant localized increase in activity in some parts of the brain; As people used these over time, the "hardness" of
      • Yes, in that one niche area.If you train it by doing long division in your head, for example, you would soon get very, very good at long division.

        I don't think so. What you are learning to do is not just the e.g. long division, but rather, exciting some specific, externally-identifiable brain process. With practice, you'd learn precisely the range of thoughts that will activate the brainreader. That would, in turn, make you better able to control precisely which kind of thoughts your brain is using. I f
        • The article says that any kind of though that activates the frontal parts of the brain will work. They give the example of doing mental math, or mentally singing a song. So what benefits, exactly, do you expect you'll gain from doing this over time? I mean, hypothetically, let's say you recognize a way to subconciously turn it on and off without have to explicitly think about anything--what other field do you anticipate that to impact?
    • Would increasing the use of your brain like this, to give commands, make you smarter in some way, as well?

      "You", I am sorry, no.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grumbel ( 592662 )
      ### Conceivably, you'd be able to enter text as quickly as you can think it.

      I wouldn't be so sure about that. The reason why we can type and speak quickly is because we *don't* have to think about it, all the little details are happening unconsciously, they are stored in muscle memory and such. This thing isn't looking like it is going to read your thoughts anytime soon, instead it forces you to think about something totally unrelated to your real thought to trigger an output, which sounds like an awful ind

  • What a coincidence! (Score:5, Funny)

    by rehtonAesoohC ( 954490 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @12:46PM (#19610075) Journal
    My boss and I were just talking human-machine interfaces yesterday. He was relating to me how he had purchased some stock in a company that specializes in human-machine interface R&D. I wondered how they managed to map brain waves (or thoughts?) to instructions.

    Scientist: "Ok now to turn left just start thinking about any kind of cheese."
    *Patient starts spinning madly in a circle*
    Scientist: "HEY! You're thinking about my WIFE you bastard!"

  • Privacy of the paralysed (Score:3, Funny)

    by vigmeister ( 1112659 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @12:49PM (#19610111)
    How do we know a paralysed guy wants this thing telling us what he's thinking. For all we know, he's probably having a good time watching all these people asking him to blink for yes and blink twice for no. And now you make him do freaking math! How the hell does he get the damn thing off? I mean, nobody's gonna ask him if he wants to use it. And if he wants screaming No No No in his head, he'd just have to think of nothing over and over again?

    We need privacy laws for the damn device!

    Cheers!
  • I would think that monitoring blood flow would be a bit slow. IANANeurologist, but doesn't the brain rely on electrical impulses for the high-speed stuff, with the chemical processes helping set the stage?

    It seems to me that if we're trying to develop a mind-control mouse interface (or whatever), it would have significantly less lag if it could read electrical signals (like an EEG).

    ...but hey -- whatever works!

    • I would think that monitoring blood flow would be a bit slow. IANANeurologist, but doesn't the brain rely on electrical impulses for the high-speed stuff, with the chemical processes helping set the stage? It seems to me that if we're trying to develop a mind-control mouse interface (or whatever), it would have significantly less lag if it could read electrical signals (like an EEG).

      Essentially you are correct. The blood flow changes in the brain are secondary to the electrical activity and occur at a d

      • well, the BOLD response measured via MRI peaks in several seconds, but you can get faster response with near infra red or passive infra red measurement. that's essentially what they are doing, i believe. i use similar sensors for biofeedback - e.g. training perfusion dynamics in the frontal lobe. it has great results, and you can watch the measurements fluctuate with concentration. what hitachi has done new is the dense array and software thresholding the signals appropriately and controlling the train a

  • Bits per second limitation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by blakestah ( 91866 ) <blakestah@gmail.com> on Friday June 22, 2007 @12:51PM (#19610145) Homepage
    This will have similar limits to systems based on EEG and MEG, although it has somewhat worse spatial resolution than either of those.

    A principle limitation in brain-machine interfaces can be summed up by noting whether the current incarnation can provide more information that a monitor of a person's eye movements (a few bits per second).

    This one will certainly fail that test, and fundamental limitations exist that will prevent its improvement, and those are based on the spatial and temporal resolution available by transcranial optical topography (or near-infrared as the case may be).
    • with an array of sensors the spatial resolution won't be that much worse than EEG, as it can employ the same kind of inverse solution algorithms to decompose the 3D infra red signal into regional or logical contribution to the blood flow changes. e.g. principal component analysis over partial differentials. and i agree with you about your bandwidth observations. there may be ways to slave software/hardware into the EEG generation system, e.g. microcolums and macrocircuits, but we don't have a perfect ide
  • I've read too many comics.

    The first thing that I thought of was, "man, that's a super-villain just WAITING to happen."

    Hello, Brainiac.
    • You blew my cover! Now I will have to have my revenge! Just as soon as I get this MS Brain(tm) thing working again...

  • What if you are bad at math? (Score:5, Funny)

    by dfn5 ( 524972 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @12:55PM (#19610225) Journal

    simply allows a user to move a train on a track by performing math in their head
    "Tonight at 11, 2 trains collide. Engineer says he forgot to carry the 1"
    • or what if you are thinking about some number and the train set that as it's speed and what if you think a about 0 and the system starts Dividing by Zero.

    • "Tonight at 11, 2 trains collide. Engineer says he forgot to carry the 1"

      Ironically enough the problem was:
      If a train leaves chicago at 10:30 AM (Central time) heading westbound at 55 mph and a train leaves Las Vegas at 11:25 AM (Mountain time) eastbound at 115 kph on the same track, where will they collide?

      The answer of course (relative to the engineer) was "here".
  • I'd love to be able to adjust the AC and control the radio without taking my eyes off the road or my hands off the wheel.

  • What worries me... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ghoser777 ( 113623 ) <fahrenba@NOsPAm.mac.com> on Friday June 22, 2007 @01:00PM (#19610293) Homepage
    is what happens when you think something that you don't want to actually carry out? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has random thoughts that enter their mind and then you dismiss and don't actually do anything with. How can you tell between idle thoughts and thoughts that are supposed to bring about actions?
    • That was addressed the the Scifi novel 'Earth' by David Brin, after a fashion. In the book, the major downfall of direct interfaces is that they are either too insensitive, and therefore unresponsive, or too sensitive, and they pick up everything that might flit across your brain, and therefore have more concepts flying across the screen than the computer, (or your eyeballs, depending on the system) can process.

    • Re:What worries me... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by venicebeach ( 702856 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @01:50PM (#19611019) Homepage Journal

      is what happens when you think something that you don't want to actually carry out? I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has random thoughts that enter their mind and then you dismiss and don't actually do anything with. How can you tell between idle thoughts and thoughts that are supposed to bring about actions?
      It's an interesting point, because the brain does use much the same circuitry for imagining action as it does for executing actions. For example, premotor cortex and supplementary motor areas are typically activated by imagining an action you don't perform, and some subregions can even be activated by seeing someone else perform an action. However, there are differences, obviously, which is why you don't perform every action you imagine (although there are a few cases of brain damage in the literature where this happens!). Primary motor cortex, which has most of the neurons that send signals downstream to the spinal cord is generally not activated by imagination.

      Short answer is that a sufficiently sophisticated device could tell the difference.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ma6ic ( 1093905 )
        fMRI/video game research has shown this to a degree. In essence, the brain interprets virtual and actual stimuli the same. The research I am familiar with shows that we process stimuli the same, but it's a reasonable argument to say we export (is this the right word?) thought the same. It's still a form of processing. I wonder what's in the black box that gives thought form? Such a fun question. Link to the abstracts:
    • How can you tell between idle thoughts and thoughts that are supposed to bring about actions?

      Well obviously the brain is capable of doing it, so i'm assuming there must be a way of differentiating the two by monitoring the brain closely enough. That might require more refining of this technology though, so until then you'll just have to stop thinking about sex all the time.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Rolgar ( 556636 )
      The new way to get someone killed. Have a bumper sticker that says "Don't veer LEFT."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bigbutt ( 65939 )
      I imagine there'd be a lot of Vista like "are you sure you want to veer left" sort of prompts until you trained your brain the right way to interface with the computer.

      [John]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Roxton ( 73137 )
      That one's easy. There's an always-on inhibitive output that you have to, in turn, explicitly inhibit to engage your action. It's thought that the brain works this way. It's also thought that this is how planning evolved in the brain -- a mechanism originally "intended" to restrain in emergencies actually allowed the brain to disable motor action entirely and use the motor coordination system for planning instead of action. It's weird but cool to think of mental mathematics and physical movement as bein
  • Hooking your brain up to the car seems a bit freaky.
    What if you just think about ramming the car that just cut you off?
    Good times.

  • Feedback (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @01:06PM (#19610383) Homepage Journal
    The biggest boost to these brain/machine interfaces will come when we can pipe feedback directly from the machine into the brain (or any neural input). The brain works as a feedback manager. Without feedback, the brain doesn't learn to change its output. With crude feedback, the lessons are learned crudely. Visual or any other feedback through a sense organ is crude, losing in translation from machine to organ and then organ to brain.

    Neural input is harder than neural output (eg. through MRI monitoring). But even a little direct neural input will be used by the brain to vastly improve the brain's control of the machines.
    • excellent point. fyi, neurofeedback devices are pretty slick these days. i've used many that provide rich feedback from EEG or blood perfusion dynamics (passive or near infra red). neural input definitely occurs via this feedback- you can make dramatic electrophysiological changes in the brain (like eliminating patterns that suggest ADHD) in about 10 hours of total training time. that's not direct neural input, of course - the rich feedback i'm referring too is light/sounds, animations, dvd movie playba

  • Hmmmmm (Score:2)

    by Knara ( 9377 )
    My only question is, what's the eta of me getting a cyberbrain and becoming a full-conversion cyborg?
  • . . . a hot cybernetic female [mobygames.com] welcomes me to the Cybernet every time I plug in.

  • Brain to Machine interface (Score:3, Funny)

    by halcyon1234 ( 834388 ) <halcyon1234@hotmail.com> on Friday June 22, 2007 @01:18PM (#19610531) Journal
    Will this fix the very common keyboard to chair interface errors that so many of my customers suffer from?
  • The advanced alien race created a machine that would do whatever they wanted, just by thinking about it, and, well, they destroyed each other!

    You start building these machines, and the next thing you know, armies of robots tasked to do our bidding will wind up ripping the clothes off the most attractive people. Fortunately, our arms race of fat has prepared us for this.

    Time to crack open a bag of Cheetos, before it is too late!
  • I tagged this one with 'borg'.

    Damn the man.

  • Cool! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bluesman ( 104513 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @01:34PM (#19610779) Homepage
    A train of thought.

  • This thing will be a brain-scraper for targeted marketing. Even if they promised 600 WPM, I still wouldn't put one on.
  • Have you seen the movie fortress?

    "this is an unauthorized thought process"

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106950/ [imdb.com]
  • Hopefully they will be in a fashioned language or non-native language.
    I wouldn't mind bringing Firefox to bare in Russian.
  • It's cool that they're able to find 'blobs' of activity in the brain, and trigger results based on general activity... but I wonder what it would take to be able to actually map a brain the same kind of way a circuit is mapped when a ROM image is read off one.

    Of course, reading a brain in many ways would be functionally equivalent to writing to it, so we'd have to find a non-destructive way somehow, or at least a way that is minimally invasive and even in reading all content that is accessed. With this cur
  • Because if anyone needs to be rescued from their own malfunctioning body, for the good of mankind, he does.

  • Current gen consoles, a retrospective. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jtheletter ( 686279 ) on Friday June 22, 2007 @02:04PM (#19611251)
    The oblig Back to the Future reference: "You mean you have to use your hands? That's a baby's toy."
  • Looks like we are on our way to J.P. Hogan's technology-based "telepathy" from "The Genesis Machine".

    Very cool.
  • Cool, one step closer to the Organians. First we have to turn into weebles then we evolve into beings of energy.

    [John]
  • Eventually, we should be able to completely cure paralization. It's just a matter of taking the correct brain waves to the correct muscles, which is what's actually be severed. I have an uncle who is paralyzed, and I think he may even have a shot at, someday, using his legs again.

    This is good news, and I look forward to further developments.

    Eddie
  • This is nothing new. People have been controlling computers with their brain for over a decade. Let me know when the computer can directly put information inside the brain. That is the *real* advance we need.

    Also. WTF? The person does math and the computer moves a train? That is totally backwards from the way it should be.
  • Just trying to find the right place to say, in my best Warren Stevens imitation, "Beware monsters from the id!!"

    More seriously, at the moment this looks like tapping a Morse code key with a bucket of water. We're making great strides with finer-grained input devices, but this really isn't much of an output interface. Makes me think of the science fiction story, "Faces", author forgotten. I also recently read about grafting new senses onto people. The nifty one I like was directional sense. They added a stri
    • this has been done, with a tongue-electrode delivering sonar sense to the brain - it's smart enough to map the signals into spatial knowledge pretty quickly. i first read about it as a military technology, but here is a page on variations on the same theme: http://www.artificialvision.com/sensub.htm [artificialvision.com]
  • I already have one; they're called "hands".
  • But I swear officer... she was thinking "yes"...
  • >The technology could one day replace remote controls and keyboards and perhaps
    >help disabled people operate electric wheelchairs, beds or artificial limbs.

    Companies such as Cyberlink, http://www.brainfingers.com/ [brainfingers.com] have products that do this for years. I know, because one of the beta testers of my software eLocutor (that allows you to type with one button, http://holisticit.com/eLocutor/elocutorv3.htm [holisticit.com]) was an ALS patient who used it to communicate. The thing costs about US$ 2000, which is rather steep.

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