Mind Over Matter: Brain Control Interfaces Become a Reality

The ability to influence the physical world merely by thought has been a dream of mankind for many years. Now researchers are making real progress in letting people control a PC simply by thinking, and the first crop of consumer Brain Control Interface (BCI) headsets has arrived. Right now these are being used only for simple games, and hardware and applications to support the technology are scarce. But this still represents a major advance that could significantly change how we all interact with computers.
For doctors this means an opportunity to help those who are so physically incapacitated due to spinal injury, brain trauma, or disease that they literally are prisoners of their own bodies. Patients like this are said to have "locked-in" syndrome. For those people, who can't even speak and therefore cannot take advantage of speech recognition software, BCI may someday be their best hope for making a real connection to the outside world.
Efficient control of a PC via BCI is not here yet, but the journey is finally underway. At the forefront of the expedition is Dr. Gerwin Schalk, a 12-year veteran in the field of BCI. Dr. Schalk is a research scientist at the Wadsworth Center, a public health laboratory that is part of the New York State Department of Health. His current brainchild is the SIGFRIED project, the technology that powers the research he is currently doing into brain control interfaces.
An advanced pattern detection and visualization tool, SIGFRIED allows clinics and researchers to better understand and interpret the massive amount of data that comes from the sensors used in brain control technology. As that is the first step in creating signals robust enough to drive an external device like a PC, SIGFRIED is facilitating the creation of BCI-compatible software that responds faster and with more advanced capabilities than previous generations.

During the course of our hour-long interview, Schalk explained the current state of the art for BCI in both research labs and the real world of computer devices. What he had to say reveals a field that has begun in earnest, and is helping to usher in a future that may be stranger that we think—and arrive sooner than we expect.
 

Dr. Gerwin Schalk