Controlling your PC with just the power of your mind.

This may sound like something straight out of a science fiction movie; however I have just come back from a demonstration by OCZ Technology of their Neural Impulse Actuator (NIA), a device that allows you to control your PC by using your brain waves.

The Neural Impluse Actuator receives instructions from brain activity via a headband (in a pleasingly sci-fi design) that connects to a small metal box and your computer by USB.  The activity that the NIA uses to control the computer are neuronal discharges (alpha, beta and gamma brain waves), electro-oculogram instructions (the language your brain uses to move your eyes) and electro-myograms (electrical discharges from the brain to the nervous system for controlling your muscles). How the NIA processes this brain activity was explained to me, however it all seemed dreadfully complicated and most of it went over my head. I’m also not entirely convinced that witchcraft doesn’t play a part.

After being told how the NIA works, and a few blank looks from me, I was ready for my inappropriately named ‘hands-on’ test. The program that runs in the background in Windows Vista for processing the instructions from your brain into keystrokes sits unobtrusively in the Taskbar notification area, and clicking on the icon brings up a program for calibrating and assigning keys to the NIA. The calibration takes very little time at all, and is simply a matter of watching a moving image for a few seconds whilst wearing the headband. After the calibration process is complete and your brain is now (somewhat scarily) in sync with Windows Vista, you can view a graphical representation of your brain’s activity in the fantastically named ‘Brain Fingers’ section, and play some simple games to get accustomed to this unconventional way of interacting with your computer.

I played Pong, and though it took a minute or so to adjust to moving the bat up by concentrating hard, and moving the bat down by relaxing I was soon able control the game by simply thinking, causing a room full of technology journalists to stare open-mouthed at a game of Pong for the first time since 1972.

Assigning keystrokes for the NIA is slightly more complicated. You can create different profiles for different games, as you will want different keys to be assigned to your brain activity in a first person shooter than to a real time strategy game for example. Assigning keys is a matter of defining an area of brain activity on a bar chart, and then assigning a key on your keyboard (for example ‘W’ for walking forward in an FPS game) to that level of brain activity. Once you are in a game, using that amount of brain activity will trigger NIA to press that key, as if you had physically pressed the key on your keyboard.

I tried this out for myself with Unreal Tournament 3, and once I had got used to the controls (I was still using the mouse to look, everything else was done via the NIA) I could see the full potential of this product. The first time I shot a player using only my mind was an experience I will remember for a long time.

The Neural Impulse Actuator could potentially make a huge impact on gaming, as it is extremely fun to use, and reaction times are cut by around 40% which could prove the difference between life and death in online games.
The accessibility implication for people unable to interact with computers via mouse and keyboard are also extremely exciting, and although this all sounds like some fantastic futuristic technology, OCZ told me that the NIA should be available to buy in a matter of weeks, and will retail at around £150.