BrainScanning
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From the Future: An iPhone accessory that reads your brain waves to discover your interests
Your iPhone already knows a lot about you, but everything it's learned about you is a direct result of you inputting information on a screen. Wouldn't it be way more convenient if your fancy handset could just read your thoughts instead? If Toyko-based Neurowear has its way, that very thing may be possible sooner that you think. The first example of the technology at work is with a new prototype device called the Neurocam. Using a not-so-stylish headset -- called the MindWave Mobile -- to read and analyze your brain waves, the company claims that the Neurocam attachment and accompanying software gauge your interest in whatever you look at. Using the data from the brain-wave scanner, your iPhone assigns a value to everything you see, from 1 to 100, and when it senses a spike, a short five-second video is created to capture it. It's a pretty wild idea, and the teaser video created by Neurowear lands somewhere between futuristic and downright goofy. Still, it's a remarkable use of the technology, and would almost certainly be a treat to play around with. At the moment, there don't appear to be any plans to bring the existing version of the product to retail, though the company seems enthusiastic about eventually integrating brain scanning into a consumer device.
Mice run through Quake, Princeton neuroscientists scan their brains for traces of evil (video)
Want to know just how prevalent technology has become in our lives? Now even lab mice get Quake-derived virtual reality playgrounds to navigate instead of their old school wooden mazes. In all honesty, this appears a significant and praiseworthy advancement, as the Princeton team have succeeded in mapping brain activity right down to the cellular level, with real-time tracking of single neurons now possible. The Orwellian-looking setup above is necessary in order to keep the mouse's head immobile, and thus capable of being studied, while the animal moves around and its brain performs motion-related tasks. Go past the break to see a schematic of the scanner and a quite unmissable video of it in action.[Via Switched]
