Can you Control a Computer with your Mind - GameGame

Other than a very vocal minority most people agree that a mouse and keyboard is the superior way to play games but what if you're unable to use a mouse and keyboard well there are many accessibility focused products out there like Microsoft's adaptive controller but what if you're unable to use even those well you could always just control the computer using your mind but hold your horses x-men fans no one's going full professor X anytime soon but the future is looking bright and we have BCI's or brain computer interfaces to thank and of course yes our body is sort of already a brain - computer interface but the problem is that our fleshy meat bags can be somewhat unreliable if someone doesn't have full control of their arms or legs using a computer can be very difficult more so if you also have difficulty speaking so that's why the work that scientists are doing on building hardware to allow people with physical impairments to control computer devices with their minds is so important but how on earth does that work well here's the thing the human brain already communicates with the body via nerve impulses which are electrical impulses that travel all throughout your body so that your hands can crack open a can of Mountain Dew to quench your thirst during a late-night frag sash or whatever else it is that you do in your spare time these electrical impulses can be measured by numerous different types of specialized technology but the most common due to its low cost and ease of use is electroencephalography or EEG now EEG uses multiple tiny electrodes place don your scalp to measure the small amount of voltage that your neurons output these readings are unique to the parts of your brain that are activated during a given task so let's say that you're speaking that uses different parts of the brain then visualizing an image or moving a body part or reading these thoughts and actions have unique activity signatures that can be identified by the EEG so with a little bit of help from our good friend machine we can train a computer to recognize a particular signature and then have it correspond to a specific function on a device a great example of this was a nearly BC I called the P 300 speller which allowed patients to type messages using their minds so they could better communicate with others it worked by flashing the rows and columns of a matrix of letters while the user focus exon the letter they wanted to type when the letter the user wanted to type flashed a unique pattern of brain activity called the P 300 hence the name occurred which would then be detected by the EEG prompting the computer to type the letter nowadays those very same concepts are being used to do things as complex as flying drones or controlling prosthetic limbs but the really exciting stuff is yet to come I mean imagine being able to access information on the internet with just a thought no more shouting hey good Ellie only to have your phone or your Google home ignore you instead the information could be at your brain tips instead of your fingertips or imagine being able to write out your thoughts exactly the way that you envision them on the page or even create images from ideas that you have in your head without ever needing to draw them the possibilities are limited only by your imagination tech entrepreneur extraordinaire Elon Musk has even taken notice of BC is and has founded a company called neural link with the goal of augmenting human intelligence with machines so that humans don't become completely obsolete in the face of the artificial intelligence future Wow Mr. musk that sounds great he wants to use a technology called neural lace that would actually wrap around the brain and allow it to send and receive data from a computer now obviously something like that is a long way from hitting the mass market but it may not also be as far away as you might think there are already commercial products on the market that you yes you can purchase companies like neuro Sky have released some relatively cheap BCI products that you can use to manipulate apps on your phone or your tablet and they also manufacture a popular Star Wars horse trainer toy that allows you to be able to approximate using the force without any pesky midi-chorions there's also the Emotive EPOC a more prosumer great option that can track your brain with even more finesse and that one's been used in the drone races that we mentioned earlier there's finally a mind controllable VR game and development right now being created by the company Mirabel and it actually uses the p300signature just like the old spelling machine op3 hundreds they grew up so fast so while brain computer interface technology is still in its infancy this could be the next massive paradigm shift in how we interact with technology and each other or with that said it could also just be another hyped up disappointment like fallout 76 speaking of disappointment if you're disappointed at your own 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