Teenager plays Space Invaders with only his brain

While having a robotic assistant play video games for you might sound novel, it's certainly not as thrilling as interacting with the 1s and 0s yourself. A team of researchers, engineers, and students at Washington University in St. Louis have crafted a brain-computer interface system that allowed a 14-year old gamer suffering from epilepsy to cruise through the first two levels of Space Invaders using only his imagination. Rather than picking up an Xbox 360 and perusing through the Xbox Live Arcade, the crew went back to their roots and programmed an Atari 2600 to interface with the brain-sensing apparatus. The headgear boasted a grid of sensors that monitored "electrocorticographic activity" from the brain's surface to detect signals based on thought processes that were going on. By calibrating his thoughts with video game triggers, the teenager was able to learn the ropes "almost instantaneously," and had no qualms demolishing the competition while twiddling his thumbs. The group plans to use this successful experiment to further understand the mysterious signals of the mind and give physically disabled individuals a chance to show of their mental sharpness, but we're hoping to see this thing bundled in with the sure-to-be-delayed PlayStation 8 that should hit shelves sometime before 2040 2050.

[Via MedGadget]

[Lighto Nee @ Oct 11th 2006 1:38PM]

I heard from reliable sources it has been pushed to 2053, due to concerns of brain inflammation.

[Scabies @ Oct 11th 2006 1:47PM]

Scary. Can you do vibration functionality AND motion detection using a brain interface? Or is that asking too much?

[Skyfire360 @ Oct 11th 2006 1:51PM]

Hahaha, cool, I'm on engadget! That's me in the blue shirt! :D

[Mikey @ Oct 11th 2006 1:55PM]

Be nice if they did, but i'm not convinced they actually used the 2600. It's there in the photo along with a stack of games i'd love to play with my brain though. Warlords!!

That version of space invaders isnt the 2600 one.
Fact! Space Invaders 2600 was the first game I ever played.. Downhill from there.

Nintendo will have their hands all over this if they are clever, they love all this brain training stuff.

Why couldnt Ben Heck have done this, then we'd have step by step instructions on how to build our own skull cap and interface it with the 2600's 9pin serial controller ports.

I want one of these brain interfaces for my Mame Cab. But those snobby scientists wont tell me how to make one.

[Brent @ Oct 11th 2006 1:56PM]

I don't understand why they used a kid with epilepsy. Don't video games cause epileptic seizures?

[David @ Oct 11th 2006 2:30PM]

epilepsy...as far as I know, that's not really the sort of thing that would limit one's use of one's hands. It's pretty pointless to point out that they used a kid with epilepsy to test something that might be more useful for somebody suffering from, say, being paralyzed.

Might as well test a new pill to stop migraine headaches on somebody suffering from acid reflux.

[Karl @ Oct 11th 2006 2:39PM]

@David and Brent: If you bothered to, oh, read the article, you'd know that they chose this kid not because he had epilepsy but because he already had the brain electrodes implanted in his skull.

[dada @ Oct 11th 2006 3:19PM]

Perhaps the epileptic gamer should consider giving up gaming. Just a thought.

[coldpizza @ Oct 11th 2006 3:23PM]

Is it just me or does that guy in the picture really suck at Space Invaders?

[David @ Oct 11th 2006 4:44PM]

@Karl: you have a point...but on the other hand, the article mentions that the boy "suffers from epilepsy" in paragraph 2. It's not until paragraph 6 that the electrodes in the brain are mentioned, and not until paragraph 7 that the electrodes are related to the epilepsy.

I suppose, then, it's an argument of journalistic style. Obviously, it's the electrodes that are more important in this research. At best, the epilepsy information is useful as an explanation of why the electrodes are there. Based on general rules of journalism, the most important information should come first (since not everybody reads the whole article ;-) ) and useless technical detail comes later.

For example, in a sports story, it'd be retarded to point out in paragraph one that "the Mets hit 4 grand slams against the Dodgers Saturday night" then wait until paragragh 23 to say "the Mets lost 17 to 16." The idea of sifting through a whole article to get to the point that "the Mets lost" is not realistic. Likewise, by pointing out the epilepsy so far in advance of the useful information, the writer was missing the point and leading many casual readers, such as myself, to miss the point as well. Honestly, if somebody's showing me a new technology, I'd care more about the fact that I'd need to get electrodes implanted in my brain than the fact that the boy demonstrating it has some disease that only affected the research in an indirect way.

[CT @ Oct 11th 2006 5:57PM]

Bit of a useless argument David. You didn't read the whole article, don't blame it on journalistic style.

[Joe Chapman @ Oct 11th 2006 8:06PM]

I think David adds a great point. The electrodes aren't worth mentioning in an article summary and would have only added to the general confusion.

[soopergooman @ Oct 11th 2006 5:04PM]

It's Play-Station9 sorry. It's due out sometime in 2024...Neural interface sold seperately.(sans rumble)

[David @ Oct 11th 2006 7:33PM]

yeesh, I guess I sometimes forget how offensive it can be to not read the whole article before posting.

anyway: it does seem like there are more and more of these brain-computer-interaction stories lately. The electrode-in-the brain idea seems like a good one for, say, creating motion for artificial limbs...but as far as games go, I think I'd stick to the "helmet with a bunch of sensors" thing. It'll be interesting in 20 (50? 100?) years or so when this tech reaches the actual gaming market...at that point, the argument over who takes their gaming most seriously may have evolved from "my video card's better than yours" to "I've got 185 sensors under my skull, and you're still wearing that silly cap."

[Peanut @ Oct 11th 2006 7:42PM]

oh god your right! the guy in the pic does really suck at space invader.. did he even kill 1 alien? seriously though, we need more people like will smith or that kid with epilepsy to protect us from alien invasion.

[jason @ Oct 19th 2007 8:00AM]

Hm. A year later, and I finally read this article. It's funny that so many people commented on how the one guy sucked at space invaders, but if you look closely - it's one of those lame posed photos. Note that there are two guys acting like they are playing, both controls plugged into the Atari, yet there's not a cartridge plugged into the Atari, and the game on the screen is not the Atari version. See (http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=459&ItemTypeID=SCREENSHOT) for a reference. Anyway... just odd that no one else noticed that. Oh and lame on the part of the photographer. I'm amazed by 'news' people that try to get the photo they think they should have instead of the guys actually playing or doing research... oh yeah, that doesn't get your picture in the paper then...

[jason @ Oct 19th 2007 8:41AM]

oh yeah, and the screenshot they are sitting in front of is in one player mode.