Untethered tech: Wireless sensors monitor brain waves data ...

NeuroSky describes its MindWave headset like a heart rate monitor for your mind.

A fighter pilot heads back to base after a long mission, feeling spent. A warning light flashes on the control panel. Has she noticed? If so, is she focused enough to fix the problem?

Untethered tech: Wireless sensors monitor brain waves, data recovery san jose,

Thanks to current advances in electroencephalographic (EEG) brain-wave detection technology, military commanders may not have to guess the answers to these questions much longer. They could soon be monitoring her mental state via helmet sensors, looking for signs she is concentrating on her flying and reacting to the warning light.

This is possible because of two key advances that made EEG technology wireless and mobile, says

Scott Makeig, director of the University of California, San Diegos Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience (SCCN) in La Jolla, Calif. EEG used to require users to sit motionless, weighted down by heavy wires. Movement interfered with the signals, so that even an eyebrow twitch could garble the brain impulses.

Modern technology lightened the load and wirelessly linked the sensors and the computers that collect the data. In addition, Makeig and othersdeveloped better algorithms?in particular, independent component analysis. By reading signals from sevedata recovery san joseral electrodes, they can infer where, within the skull, a particular impulse originated. This is akin to listening to a single speakers voice in a crowded room. In so doing, they are also able to filter out movements?not just eyebrow twitches, but also the muscle flexing needed to walk, talk, or fly a plane.

EEGs most public ce may be two Star Wars-inspired toys,Mattels MindflexandUncle Miltons Force Trainer. Introduced in 2009, they let wannabe Jedi knights practice telekinesis while wearing an EEG headset. But these toys are just the tip of the iceberg, says Makeig, whose work includes mental concentration monitoring. Did you push the red button and then say, Oops! to yourself? It would be useful in many situations?including military?for the system to be aware of that.

That kind of mental gas gauge is just one of many projects Makeig is running at the SCCN, which is part of UC San Diegos Institute for Neural Computation (INC). He also combines mobile EEG with motion-capture technology, suiting volunteers in EEG caps andLED-speckled spandex suitsso he can follow their movements with cameras in a converted basement classroom. For the first time, researchers like Makeig can examine the thoughts that lead to movement, in both healthy people and participants with conditions such as autism. Makeig calls the system Mobile Brain/Body Imaging, or MoBI. It allows him to study actions at the speed of thought itself, he says.

EEG does not directly read thoughts. Instead, it picks up on the electrical fields generated by nerves, which communicate via electricity. The EEG sensors?from the one on theStar Warsgames to the 256 in Makeigs MoBI?are like microphones listening to those microvolt-strength neural signals, says Tansy Brook, head of communications forNeuroSkyBrain-Computer Intece Technology in San Jose, Calif., makers of the chip in the Star Wars toys and many other research, educational and entertainment products.

For one project, Makeig is collaborating with neuroscientists Marissa Westerfield and Jean Thompson, UC San Diego researchers studying movement behavior in teenagers with autism. They put the teens, wearing the EEG sensors and LEDs, in Makeigs special classroom. Then, they project a spaceship on the walls. The kids have to chase the spaceship as it darts from one point to another. Although the results are not yet in, Westerfield suspects that people with autism, compared with those who are non-autistic, will take longer to process where the spaceship has gone and readjust their movements toward it. If we had a better idea of the underlying deficits?then we could possibly design better interventions, such as targeted physical therapy for the movement problems autistic people have, Westerfield says.

Neuroscientists and psychologists have been using EEG to eavesdrop on brain waves since 1926, and doctors employ it to study sleep patterns and observe epileptic seizures. During most of that time, subjects had to sit in an electrically shielded booth, like a big refrigerator, saysJohn Foxe, a neuroscientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. He calls Makeigs MoBI technical wizardry that will enable scientists to watch the brain and how it works in much more realistic settings.

Wireless EEG has already had an impact on gaming. San Francisco-based Emotiv has since 2009 sold itsEPOC EEG headset, which uses electrical signals to determine a players emotional state?excitement, frustration, and boredom each create a different pattern. Gamers using Emotivs technology can also create mental spells to lift or push virtual objects, says Geoff Mackellar, CEO of Emotivs research unit based in Sydney, Australia. The EPOC is also regularly used in research labs and may have medical applications in the future, Mackellar adds.

Wireless EEG technology provides signals as clear as the wired version, Makeig says, and at about 3.5 kilograms his machinery is luggable. (Emotivs and NeuroSkys headsets, which use fewer electrodes, are lighter.) Of course, were not starting with ballet dancers doing The Rite of Spring, he admits, but the team has succeeded with joggers on a treadmill. One challenge they would still like to overcome is to remove the sticky, conductive gel that goes under each electrode. It can certainly be done?Emotivs electrodes use only saltwater and NeuroSkys are dry.

Tzyy-Ping Jung, associate director of the SCCN, predicts the group will make a dry, 64-electrode system within a couple of years. He and Makeig envision the headset willhelp paralyzed people interact with the world, warn migraine sufferers of an impending headache, and adjust computerized learning to match a students personal pace, among other potential applications.

Its certainly something that everyone can have at home, Emotivs Mackellar says.

This story was first published by Scientific American asNotion in Motion: Wireless Sensors Monitor Brain Waves on the FlyIt was written byAmber Dance.

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