There's a common misconception that everyone who plays video games are lazy because all they seem to do is sit on their ass all day. With the advent of the Wii this opinion has changed a little but there's still the idea that video gamers could be doing far more with their time. So, when some Japanese bioengineers come up with a way of playing games without even so much as moving a muscle you might concede that these 'haters' have a point.
Unfortunately the 'game' they decided to test this on was Second Life and one could argue whether or not the 'games' users actually have brains that think about anything other than sex (cheer up, I'm kidding!). The device works by monitoring electrical activity in the motoro cortex via eternal electrodes on the scalp. Hmm, I'll let the experts explain this one;
All a user has to do to control his/her avatar is imagine performing various movements. The activity monitored by the headpiece is read and plotted by an electroencephalogram, which relays it to a computer running a brain wave analysis algorithm that interprets the imagined movements. A keyboard emulator then translates the data into signals which can be used to control the movements of the user's on-screen avatar in real-time. - Neurophilosophy
Ok, so Second Life users may just want to use this technology to shift their position on the bed but this device is potentially revolutionary. The video demonstration doesn't show anything more than simply walking around the environment but, of course, this is still in it's early stages. It's a little creepy thinking about it but a future where we control computers and devices just by thinking is looking very likely now.
The Japanese always invent the cool stuff.
Brain-computer interface for controlling Second Life avatars - Neurophilosophy (Via BoingBoing).
Video Demonstration - YouTube.
Keio University press release - Keio University.
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