The New Age of the Mind

by Merl

In 27:2., there was an article entitled "My Second Implant" by Estragon, which seems to have fooled at least one person into thinking that the implant story was fact.

Though that story may have been fictional, as someone with some knowledge of the current state of biotech implants and someone who's entering into the biotech field, I can tell you that we are, indeed, not very far from the day when such implants will become possible and available.

In this article, I would like to give you a very broad overview of a technology (dry-electrode EEG) which is becoming commercially and cheaply available, and which opens all sorts of exciting and fascinating doors for anyone interested in doing new and cool things involving their brain/mind.  And if you are reading this magazine, chances are that you're more than a little interested in "mind hacking" of any kind.

EEG, or electroencephalography, refers to a method of recording the electrical activity of the brain by placing electrodes on the scalp, and sometimes face, of a person.

The way this works is that the brain's neurons are constantly firing off so-called action potentials, or spikes, which are the electrochemical signals generated and propagated by neurons as they receive and integrate signals (spikes) from other neurons.

An individual spike is too weak to be detected by these electrodes on the scalp of a person (due to the fast attenuation of the electrical field changes outside the neuron that fired), but an interesting phenomenon happens when a group of neurons is connected in a neural network - rhythmic oscillating patterns of neural activity emerge.

We call these "neural oscillations" and they are a result of neural synchronization.  This is a good example of what some call "emergent" behavior due to the individual nodes or neurons doing their own thing.  When a large number of neurons (and such neural networks) intercommunicate, we get macroscopic oscillations that reach the scalp and can, in principle, be detected using pretty standard electrical measuring equipment.

Of course, EEG recording equipment is usually quite specialized and often contains filters (to isolate noise from the electrical grid, lights, wireless devices, etc.) and, in a lab setting, EEG recordings tend to be made by first applying an electroconductive gel on the subject being recorded, in order to get a better conductance of the signals from the scalp and to get a better recording.

There is also a software processing stage where a mathematical transformation called Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is applied to the raw detected waveform of a signal in order to isolate different neural oscillation frequencies, which tend to correspond to different emotional and mental states.

The different frequencies are also often generated in slightly different parts of the brain, and this information is also often useful.  The reason we need such elaborate methods to get good and useful recordings is that the amplitude or strength of the electrical signals that reach the scalp are on the order of 1 to 100 µV (microvolts).

With such weak signals, it's very easy to get unwanted artifacts mixed in with the brain wave information.  This is why in clinical settings, subdermal (under the skin) electrodes are sometimes used, where we get signals with amplitudes of 10 to 20 mV, allowing for better recordings.

Now, as previously explained, lab/clinical EEGs have always tended to use an electroconductive gel and often involved the placement of ten (but sometimes up to 50!) electrodes on a person's head.  This is not very convenient or wanted for a home or commercial setting.

Recently, however, a company called NeuroSky released a dry-electrody technology and there are now cheap ($100) EEG headsets available.  There are a number of different models by a number of different companies, but all the cheap ($100) models currently use the NeuroSky chips but offer slightly different packaging and Software Development Kit (STKs).

I will tell you a bit about NeuroSky's own EEG headset, the MindWave, as that is the one I have and the one I have some personal experience with.  The MindWave is a single dry-electrode headset, where the electrode is placed on your head and there is a piece placed on your earlobe which records a reference measurement, which is important for signal filtering purposes.

The unit itself looks rather good and slick, and is very light and quite comfortable.  The size is comparable to a small microphone/headphone headset, except that you have one piece that sticks out with its forehead-touching sensor, and a second piece with a clip on your earlobe.  Also, I should mention that the MindWave is quite nice in that it's usable with Android, iOS, Windows, and OS X.

There seem to be some people who have attempted to do some things with the device on Linux, but, as usual, don't expect very good Linux compatibility.  Also, the device communicates using Bluetooth.  Though it may still be a little strange to walk around outside with such a headset, it is comfortable and usable in a home setting.

So, you ask, "What can I do with this cool new technology?"  I don't mean to sound like a sales representative for the company, but, really, you can do a whole lot and what you can achieve with such a technology is very much up to you - the developer, the hacker, the creator.

There are a number of applications available for free (and that come with the MindWave) and there are a bunch more available in the iStore and other places online.

The most important point, however, is that there are freely available SDKs and development environments so that you can write apps for your Android phones or for your home machine.  These SDKs allow you to write apps in, for example, Java, and the SDK and APIs provide you with methods for retrieving the sensor values which change as your mental/brain state changes.

I don't know about you, but the prospect of writing software that responds to my brain wave patterns (and thoughts) is very exciting and cool.

Indeed, I suspect that most people who consider themselves "hackers" have at one point or another wondered about the brain and the possibilities that stem from using it for doing things.

Well folks, the time has come and I urge you and all your friends to go out and learn things about the brain and neuroscience, and start shaping the new world that will, as Arthur C. Clarke once said, "... be indistinguishable from magic."  This is truly a field which awaits pioneers, great discoveries, and the creation of amazing new products.

I hope you have enjoyed this short introduction to this amazing technology and the awesome future prospects it promises.

Happy hacking!

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