Innovations: Scientists use the power of thought to control a computer

The idea

We are on the verge of a amazing journey. As kids we were encouraged to "show and tell" in our school. Now for those less fortunate, scientists have enabled them to perform a "think and tell" show.

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This enables a person who can interact with a computer to have what he wants the computer to do just by thinking. This wonderful experiment can have a plethora of applications. Right from differently abled people who cannot speak can make use of this technology to forensic application of unearthing espionage to plain, simple lie detection. When the internal dialogues are interpreted it can also help patients with mental illness to be treated, using more effective psychotherapy, which is based on the real data of what is going on in their minds.

Dr. Leuthardt at the Washington School of Medicine, St Louis and his team has come up with this technique named ECoG - Electro Cortiography - which enables brains to be connected to computers, directly using electrodes.

The making

How this has been realized is amazingly simple. The brain has several parts which control the thinking, speaking, movements and so on. Scientists in this case managed to hook up electrodes to pick up signals from the area of the brain which has to do with "thinking." Now once that was done the easier part was to map some of the thinking patterns to, in this experiment, corresponding mouse movements. So if you think of "oo," the cursor moved down as a programmed response. Similary few more thinking patterns related to these sounds "ee" or "eh" were programmed for the other cursor movements. This experiment also enables people to say these sounds to enable the computer interaction in an exactly similar way. This helps those who had to move their arms or so to communicate with the computer, who can now interact more naturally.

This "connection" between the specific areas of the brain and the computer was made by placing a surgical implant temporarily inside the brain of volunteers.

What’s new

The uniqueness of this, comes from the fact that now people can just "think" about it and the computer starts to understand and respond instead of elaborate, specific and complicated gestures and controls that was needed to interact. This gives voice to the speechless, expression to the disabled and a enriched life for many.

Applications

This application can lead up to "reading minds." This technology can enable people with limited or no motor skills or speaking ability to complement their expression abilities. And now they can do so as fast as a normal person could do. Special computer applications could take this to another level as far as people with special talents but with express disabilities. Now they could guide artwork, manage a problem-solving session or even a music composition. We know that special disabilities are complemented in plenty with another special talent. The point is expression disability. This technology can unlock that latent potential. It can also enable the lie detection to be taken to the next level which can increase the effectiveness of anti-terrorism measures by implanting this when terrorists are captive. Who knows if we can manage to develop an inducer which can pick up a signal from a person with this implant and retransmit, then the coverage of this technology can be enormous and virtually unlimited.

As Dr Leuthardt says,

We want to see if we cannot just detect when you are saying dog, tree, tool or some other word, but also learn what the pure idea of that looks like in your mind. He adds, "This is one of the earliest examples, to a very, very small extent of what is called reading minds - detecting what people are saying to themselves in their internal dialogue. Its exciting and a little scary to think of reading minds.