In fact, they are seeing great results. The study has focused on 10 specific words like yes, no, more, less, hot, cold, and hungry. They have had up to a 90% success rate in distinguishing between the brain activity associated with any two words, and up to 48% success in determining a single word among the field of 10. Of course, this the birth of the technology, and the success rates will improve over time.

[via Singularity Hub]

Researchers would be wasting their time, and their patrons’ money, scanning my brain. They’d quickly find nothing but World of Warcraft Auction House strategies and an incredible amount of space devoted to translation Marca, A Bola, La Gazzetta Dello Sport, and France Football every morning. Maybe if they’d scan, say, the brains of Fez Whatley or Vince McMahon, then they’d find something interesting.

The deal is that researchers now believe that a simple brain scan reveal far more than what was previously thought, including thought patterns. “Man, this guy thinks about sandwiches an awful lot.”

It’s not so much reading your mind, Psycho Mantis-style, but rather observing how your brain works when it’s recalling memories. Like, “oh, activity increases in this region, then increases in that region.”

That will not stop the Drudge-linked readers from freaking out, and somehow blaming the liberal media for the scientific development.

Says the author of the study responsible for the findings:

We’ve been able to look at brain activity for a specific episodic memory—to look at actual memory traces. We found that our memories are definitely represented in the hippocampus. Now that we’ve seen where they are, we have an opportunity to understand how memories are stored and how they may change through time.

Maybe science can next tell us why Techmeme is so important.

We all knew this would come one day, especially since the basic technology has been around for some time, and now we have it: A brain activity-powered remote control that can be used without you having to lift a finger. The Hitachi device is unfortunately just a prototype, but at least they’re planning to commercialize it within three to four years.

The technology is being developed not for lazy couch potatoes but for something that actually makes a lot of sense: Hitachi says they would like to see physically handicapped people using the remote control in the future (think about how many times a day you push buttons on your remote when watching TV).

All that users need to do is to think about changing channels or control the volume on a TV to make that happen (the technology can naturally be used for other appliances as well). A headset scans the user’s brain with near-infrared rays, measuring changes in blood flow (which indicate activity) in the brain. It then sends the brain signals to the remote control through optical fiber, making the remote beam infrared signals to the appliance in question.

Hitachi’s brain-machine interface system weighs just 1kg. The company says similar systems are as large as a fridge.
(My apologies for the small picture, which is the only one available at this point.)

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

It’s one thing to develop an interface that lets you control slow-moving robots with your thoughts alone, but it’s quite another to let you play pinball that way. But a machine built by researchers at prestigious Technische Universität Berlin in Germany makes just that possible.

All users need to do is to wear an elastic cap with electrodes attached to it and think about moving their arms. The researchers claim that people usually need between ten and thirty minutes of dry runs before being able to play pinball without arms.

They also say their system is the fastest worldwide, with lags being in the 600 millisecond to one full second range. And the technology isn’t good for fun stuff only, but also suitable for “serious” applications, such as home assistance for impaired people. The most expensive part is the cap, as the system just requires conventional computers to work.

You can watch a video with a person playing pinball by his thoughts alone here [GER].

Via Der Spiegel [GER]

Can’t wait to play video games with your braaaaain? Well in “several months” you should be able to purchase the Emotiv EPOC.

We’ve been keeping tabs on the progress of this gadget and we’re excited. I dunno how well the tech will work on a massive scale – what with everybody having different brains and all – but the demo at IDF was pretty cool.

Cool and realistic. Realistic in the sense that the dude wearing the headgear had some trouble getting it to work effortlessly. In the demonstration game, he was tasked with moving some objects around. The sky reflected his mood with a changing color palette. (That was demonstrated by him growling at the screen – facial expression recognition). However, when it came time to “pick up” some planks of wood in order to complete a bridge, it took some amount of concentration. With several thousand people rooting him on as he “used the force”, he eventually was able to complete the task.

The fact that it required a little bit of extra concentration makes the whole thing seem more approachable. If we are gonna have brainwave controllers, I know I ain’t gonna expect them to work awesomely at the first generation. But being awesome? Yeah. Lots of potential here…

Scientists in the UK (well, Reading) have developed a robot that has an actual brain. Like, the brain is made out of rat neurons. So already this robot is smarter than Biggs.

The scientists, from the University of Reading, put together the robot so they can better study “how memories are actually stored in a biological brain.” That it may help them study diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s is like bonus points.

The brain communicates with the body via a Bluetooth connection, which must be the best use of Bluetooth yet.

So yeah, a rat brain robot. I’m sorta surprised this wasn’t developed in Japan.

A small device, implanted in the chest, can potentially treat depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder in most patients. The device, produced by Medtronic, prevents recurring feelings of depression or obsession by shocking the brain consistently.

Seventeen patients, diagnosed as having major depressive disorder, were followed for a year and demonstrated overall improvement in mood as well as social and occupational functioning, he said.

The technique, called Deep Brain Stimulation, stimulates the neural circuits which control mood and anxiety.

On What.cd? yesterday, a freeleech torrent was uploaded containing a bunch of I-Doser FLACs. Now, call me ignorant or whatever, but how do I get these things to work reliably? I tried following the directions as best as I could—turn the lights out, relax, have a good pair of headphones, etc.—but I simply couldn’t get anything to happen. I tried the Lucid Dream and Hand of God (in honor of Diego Maradona, of course) and the only thing that “happened” is I got angry at myself for thinking anything would happen.

For the unfamiliar, I-Doser is a program (nothing more than a set of sound files) that use something called binaural sound waves to “trick” your brain into thinking it’s in an altered state like drunk, on DMT, high, etc. It’s harmless.

So if anyone knows how to make these things “work,” whatever that ends up meaning, please let me know.

I-Doser

Getting old sucks, doesn’t it? One of the downfalls is that your brain isn’t quite as sharp as it was five, 10 or 25 years ago. It’s important to exercise the brain to try and combat the effects of old age and hopefully deter diseases linked to growing older such as Alzheimer’s. This is where Happy Neuron’s 25 brain fitness games can keep the five major cognitive brain functions (memory, language, attention, executive functions, visual/spatial) in tip-top shape. You won’t have to go it alone, either.

Each Happy Neuron subscription includes an online coach that manages your personal brain workouts, progression and performance. A monthly subscription is only $9.95 or $99.95 for the year. You can try the games out for seven days for free, too. You’ll thank yourself later because you’ll remember.

Happy Neuron [via Press Release]

Well Friday wasn’t the busiest of news days, but quality over quantity right? These are some of the biggest stories from the day that was yesterday. For now I’m gonna go try to work off this hangover.

Scientists have found that the thalamus might not be the primitive structure they had previously thought. Before they thought it was simply a gate that opened and shut to allow sensory information to flow through or to bar it, now they believe it has more processing power and can pick and choose who goes through, like a bouncer does at a club. What does this all mean? It’s mostly food for thought, right now anyway, but it may lead scientists to make more advanced discoveries about how the brain functions.

Your Brain Boots Up Like a Computer[livescience]