Brain-Computer Interface

Our brain generates all kinds of electrical signals with our thoughts, so much so that each specific thought has its own brainwave pattern. These unique electrical signals can be mapped to carry out specific commands so that thinking the thought can actually carry out the set command.

In a EPOC neuroheadset created by Tan Le, the co-founder and president of Emotiv Lifescience, users have to don a futuristic headset that detects their brainwaves generated by their thoughts.

As you can see from this demo video, the command executed by thought is pretty primitive (i.e. pulling the cube towards the user) and yet the detection seems to be facing some difficulties. It looks like this UI may take awhile to be adequately developed.

In any case, envision a (distant) future where one could operate computer systems with thoughts alone. From the concept of a ‘smart home’ where one could turn lights on or off without having to step out of your bed in the morning, to the idea of immersing yourself in an ultimate gaming experience that response to your mood (via brainwaves), the potential for such an awesome UI is practically limitless.

EARLY WORK

In 1969 the operant conditioning studies of Fetz and colleagues, at the Regional Primate Research Center and Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, showed for the first time that monkeys could learn to control the deflection of a biofeedback meter arm with neural activity. Similar work in the 1970s established that monkeys could quickly learn to voluntarily control the firing rates of individual and multiple neurons in the primary motor cortex if they were rewarded for generating appropriate patterns of neural activity.

Studies that developed algorithms to reconstruct movements from motor cortex neurons, which control movement, date back to the 1970s. In the 1980s, Apostolos Georgopoulos at Johns Hopkins University found a mathematical relationship between the electrical responses of single motor cortex neurons in rhesus macaque monkeys and the direction in which they moved their arms (based on a cosine function). He also found that dispersed groups of neurons, in different areas of the monkey's brains, collectively controlled motor commands, but was able to record the firings of neurons in only one area at a time, because of the technical limitations imposed by his equipment.

There has been rapid development in BCIs since the mid-1990s. Several groups have been able to capture complex brain motor cortex signals by recording from neural ensembles (groups of neurons) and using these to control external devices.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

A consortium consisting of 12 European partners has completed a roadmap to support the European Commission in their funding decisions for the new framework program Horizon 2020. The project, which was funded by the European Commission, started in November 2013 and ended in April 2015. The roadmap is now complete, and can be downloaded on the project's webpage. A 2015 publication describes some of the analyses and achievements of this project, as well as the emerging Brain-Computer Interface Society. For example, this article reviewed work within this project that further defined BCIs and applications, explored recent trends, discussed ethical issues, and evaluated different directions for new BCIs. As the article notes, their new roadmap generally extends and supports the recommendations from the Future BNCI project, which conveys some enthusiasm for emerging BCI directions.

In addition to, other recent publications have explored the most promising future BCI directions for new groups of disabled users. Some prominent examples are summarized below.