Avatar: Second Highest-Grossing Film of All-Time? Tuesday, Jan 5 2010
BCI 7:30 pm
Apparently it’s on its way. That should increase popular familiarity with brain-computer interfacing.
MIT Professor Ed Boyden Describes a Revolutionary New Brain-Computer Interfacing Method (Video from SS09) Wednesday, Dec 2 2009
MIT’s Ed Boyden at Singularity Summit 2009 — Synthetic Neurobiology: Optically Engineering the Brain to Augment Its Function Thursday, Nov 5 2009
BCI and technology and videos 5:09 pm
Ed Boyden at Singularity Summit 2009 — Synthetic Neurobiology: Optically Engineering the Brain to Augment Its Function from Michael Anissimov on Vimeo.
Here’s another interesting talk, this one by rising MIT star Ed Boyden on directly interfacing with the brain via optical signals.
Wired: “Brain Scans Reveal What You’ve Seen” Friday, Sep 25 2009
BCI 8:02 am
See Wired’s coverage.
See my post from last year on a “dream machine”.
See also Ramez Naam’s More Than Human, several chapters of which are devoted to a hypothetical brain implant that allows people to share their imaginations quickly and easily.
Creating a Mental Transcript of Everything You Think Sunday, Jun 21 2009
BCI 2:47 pm
The vast majority of all thought is wasted because we forget what we were thinking. There is no record unless we write it all down.
Some form of electronic telepathy already exists, but it is crude. Ambient Corp’s neckband lets you speak without opening your mouth. The system only knows 150 words.
In the longer term, it may be possible to use a similar technology to make a constant transcript of thoughts in realtime. This article from PopSci mentions:
Neuroscientists are already able to read some basic thoughts, like whether an individual test subject is looking at a picture of a cat or an image with a specific left or right orientation. They can even read pictures that you’re simply imagining in your mind’s eye. Even leaders in the field are shocked by how far we’ve come in our ability to peer into people’s minds.
Did you know that we can already read basic thoughts? The PopSci article is optimistic about timeframes — it sort of has to be, because it is a magazine made for entertainment. (And generally untrustworthy, like its cousin New Scientist.) Mind reading technology may be somewhat far off (or possibly not), but it certainly has interesting implications. I am curious about combining mind-reading technology with augmented reality to open up exciting new forms of collaboration and gaming. There could be major breakthroughs in that area within a decade, if we are lucky.
Comparison of Consumer Brain-Computer Interface Devices Friday, Jun 19 2009
BCI 8:09 pm
Check out this interesting comparison of consumer brain-computer interfaces on Wikipedia.
Emotiv is apparently coming out with their EPOC in Q4 2009. The page says:
Due to the complex detection algorithms involved, there is a slight lag in detecting thoughts, making them more suitable for use in games like Harry Potter than FPS games.
Obviously faster computers would help here. People ask about the economic motivations for why the average person would want faster computers. This could become one of them.
