Netflix's developers are at it again, using the company's annual Hack Day to come up with clever, if sometimes wild, ideas on how to improve the streaming service. This year's crop of hacks mostly focus on intriguing Stranger Things integrations, but...
A 58-year-old woman left paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease) has now become the first patient to use a brain-computer interface to restore some of her day-to-day functions. The woman was left "almost c...
Verifying your identity with brainwave scans sounds pretty awesome on the surface, but new research from from Texas Tech University shows that EEG identification could be the start of a whole new world of privacy concerns. It's not so much that brain...
Neurotechnology company Rythm launched both itself and its first product on Thursday, called the Dreem. The Dreem is a wearable device laden with EEG sensors. However, unlike other systems that utilize similar technology, the Dreem reportedly does mo...
A team of researchers from the Jacobs School of Engineering and Institute for Neural Computation at UC San Diego have developed a 64-channel "dry" electroencephalogram (EEG), reportedly the world's first. Traditional EEGs require their electrodes be...
Today on In Case You Missed It: Shiftwear wants to change your shoe game with color e-paper screens that can move and shift into beautiful pictures on the sneakers you're wearing. It's too early to tell whether they will fund; or look as good as they...
A paraplegic has walked without robotics using his own brain waves, thanks to research done at Southern California's UC Irvine. Scientists used a computer to "link" 28-year-old Adam Fritz's brain to his legs over a Bluetooth connection, bypassing t...
There are lots of gaming peripherals out there, and some of them can get really, really expensive. Hell, I once reviewed a racing wheel, pedals, and shifter set that goes for about $1,200. Even something as simple as a mouse or keyboard can cost you hundreds. When it comes to more creative peripherals like the OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator or some hardcore hydraulic sim systems, the sky is the limit.
This is probably the most expensive peripheral ever, given that it’s made up of tons of extremely expensive, university-grade research equipment and an actual live person. Researchers at the University of Washington used electroencephalography (EEG) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to read when a person defending a virtual city from a flying, missile-launching pirate ship (why the hell not?) wanted to fire her cannon. The person playing thought about moving her hand, and because of that and some science and crap, a person in an entirely different room involuntarily twitched and activated a track pad that sent a message to the game that fired the cannon.
I wonder if the latency is better or worse than a wireless mouse?
A slew of negatives plague video games -- Peter Pan Syndrome, hyper-violence, camping -- but their youthfulness could do just what Nintendo's Brain Age promised: improve elderly brain function. Over four years, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco had a group play a custom game (video of it in action is after the break) that tasks players to drive and identify road signs that appear while ignoring certain others, according to the New York Times. It's not quite Grand Theft Auto, but it proved how hard successfully multitasking becomes with age. However, after training with the game, the 60 to 80 year old test subjects stomped those a fraction of their age who had no prior exposure to it. What's more, this experience produced brain functionality benefits outside of the game.
This isn't a fluke, either. For proof, the scientists used electroencephalography to monitor the older subjects and found that while playing, the theta wave activity -- associated with attention -- in their prefrontal cortexes looked like that of a younger adult's. These findings may help scientists understand what areas of the brain "could and should" be manipulated to improve cognitive functions like memory. The study appears in today's edition of Nature and backs up similar research from May that also used a concentration-heavy game, and reported like results. Now if you'll pardon us, we have to show our parents that all those hours of our childhood weren't wasted.
Customized scarves are nothing new, but artists Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet still came up with something truly novel and different in this category.
They worked with Sebastian Mealla from the Music Technology Group in Barcelona to create something called Neuro Knitting.
The process is described as follows:
Neuro Knitting represents a novel way of personal, generative design and fabrication. An approach that brings together affective computing and digital crafts. And thus, it offers new applications and creative thinking to both areas. It’s basically a process where you, the person who wants a new one-of-a-kind scarf, wears an EEG cap and listens to 10 minutes of classical music. Your brain activity is recorded and transferred into a knitting pattern using a program called Knitic.
A custom scarf is then knitted from this pattern, and voila! You’ve got a truly unique brainwave-patterned scarf that’s yours, in every sense of the word.
But note that if you have something against Bach’s Goldberg Variations, you’ll probably have one chaotic-looking scarf.
Netflix's developers are at it again, using the company's annual Hack Day to come up with clever, if sometimes wild, ideas on how to improve the streaming service. This year's crop of hacks mostly focus on intriguing Stranger Things integrations, but...
A 58-year-old woman left paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease) has now become the first patient to use a brain-computer interface to restore some of her day-to-day functions. The woman was left "almost c...
Verifying your identity with brainwave scans sounds pretty awesome on the surface, but new research from from Texas Tech University shows that EEG identification could be the start of a whole new world of privacy concerns. It's not so much that brain...
Neurotechnology company Rythm launched both itself and its first product on Thursday, called the Dreem. The Dreem is a wearable device laden with EEG sensors. However, unlike other systems that utilize similar technology, the Dreem reportedly does mo...
A team of researchers from the Jacobs School of Engineering and Institute for Neural Computation at UC San Diego have developed a 64-channel "dry" electroencephalogram (EEG), reportedly the world's first. Traditional EEGs require their electrodes be...
Today on In Case You Missed It: Shiftwear wants to change your shoe game with color e-paper screens that can move and shift into beautiful pictures on the sneakers you're wearing. It's too early to tell whether they will fund; or look as good as they...
A paraplegic has walked without robotics using his own brain waves, thanks to research done at Southern California's UC Irvine. Scientists used a computer to "link" 28-year-old Adam Fritz's brain to his legs over a Bluetooth connection, bypassing t...
