NIFarious Ideas: Dial your cell phone...with your brain?

A study recently published in the Journal of Neural Engineering, performed here at UCSD in the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience by Tzyy-Ping Jung and his team demonstrates a proof-of-concept for dialing a cell phone through a brain-computer interface (BCI).

The team sought out to develop an integrated mobile and wireless electroencephalogram (EEG) system to provide the first truly wearable and wireless online BCI. In study, participates were trained to look at numbers on a screen. Based on the steady-state visual evoked potential obtained from the EEG, researchers were able to determine the number the person was looking at and have that number dial on the phone.

Although they state that "this study is the first to demonstrate a truly portable, cost-effective and miniature cell-phone-based platform for online BCIs", the sci-fi dream of calling up your friends just by thinking about them is still quite far off.

At any rate, this is one step closer..and for that, we thank Dr. Jung and is team for thinking dangerously.

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NIFarious Ideas is a regular weekly column on the NIF Blog that appears every Friday. We seek to highlight the avant-garde, the dangerous, the progressive, the cutting edge in software tools, databasing, ontologies, searching, data collecting and distributing, and of course, neuroscience trends. Join us each Friday -- Be NIFarious!