"A convincing twin of Darth Vader stalks the beige cubicles of a Silicon Valley office, complete with ominous black mask, cape and light saber," reports AP of NeuroSky. "But this is no chintzy Halloween costume. It's a prototype, years in the making, of a toy that incorporates brain wave-reading technology."
The AP story says:
NeuroSky's prototype measures a person's baseline brain-wave activity, including signals that relate to concentration, relaxation and anxiety. The technology ranks performance in each category on a scale of 1 to 100, and the numbers change as a person thinks about relaxing images, focuses intently, or gets kicked, interrupted or otherwise distracted.
Adding biofeedback to "Tiger Woods PGA Tour," for instance, could mean that only those players who muster Zen-like concentration could nail a put [sic]. In the popular action game "Grand Theft Auto," players who become nervous or frightened would have worse aim than those who remain relaxed and focused.
People have been playing around with using brainwaves to control computers since the 1980s or earlier. The trick is to get a cheap electroencephalographic (EEG) system that is sensitive enough to produce anything meaningful. If NeuroSky has managed that, it could do OK.
I have some experience of this, since one of the things I did to earn money while at university was sell my brainwaves. Literally. At the time (around 1970), it involved researchers attaching up to two dozen electrodes to your scalp, and using some messy "glue" to ensure a good connection. I found that, given a visible feedback mechanism (an oscilloscope) it wasn't hard to modify your brainwave patterns. But doing the same thing while playing GTA is no doubt a different matter.
