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Underground > Laboratory >

NASA Bio-feedback device

Molly Shortcake

23:28 / 01.08.01

If they could only target the pleasure centers.

15:04 / 02.08.01

quote:This unique interactive system, tested at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) in Norfolk, trains people to change their brainwave activity or other physiological functions while playing popular off-the-shelf video games. This is accomplished by making the video game respond to the activity of the player's body and brain.

quote:As the player's brainwaves come closer to an optimal, stress-free pattern, the video game's joystick becomes easier to control. This encourages the player to produce these patterns or signals to succeed at the game.

Molly Shortcake

00:42 / 04.08.01

A related article on fractal generators reading brain waves for music - from feedmag.com

There's one other alternative, and it's the most radical one of all: Teach the software about music by teaching it to listen to our brains. A number of technology startups have been experimenting with neurofeedback devices that measure brain waves themselves, and translate them into computer-generated images and sounds, the way G-Force translates MP3 data. Certain brain-wave patterns appear in moments of intense concentration; others in states of meditative calm; others in states of distraction or fear. A series of EEG sensors applied to your skull register changes in the patterns of your brain waves, and transform them into a medium that you can perceive directly, often in the form of shifting colors and textures on a computer screen. As your brain drifts from one state to another, the image changes accordingly, giving you real-time feedback about your brain's EEG activity. Presumably, those data points could be integrated into the G-Force application alongside the soundwave data: If the launch into the chorus of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" triggers a surge of adrenaline through your body, the EEG might detect a change in your brain's overall state and send that information back to the screen; if listening to Ravi Shankar lulls you into a trance, G-Force could automatically supply an onscreen mandala to accompany your meditations.

Molly Shortcake

04:30 / 04.08.01

EEG aren't just being used for visualizing brainwaves or for entering meditative states while playing video games. Eventually, we may get rid of hand based interfaces altogether. EEG interfaces have been tested for basic cursor control, flight simulation (by NASA and/or the military) limited video game use (games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man) and even music. It involves flexing 'brain muscles', using the brain in new ways.

quote:Ben started biofeedback in September, which required, him to play a Pac-Man-like video game without hand controls. Instead, Ben was hooked up to the computer by electrode plays attached to his head and played the game by carefully focusing his attention on the task at hand.

http://www.eegspectrum.com/media/martin97.htm

quote:"I read some articles about doing brain computer interfacing for disabled people," Steck said. "In fact, there were some devices on the market where you could play a video game by putting a device on your finger, and it would pick up some kind of physiological activity instead of using a mouse on a computer.

"So I thought there was an application for using the artificial intelligence technology and neural networks for processing the information from the brain to control a computer and to build a musical instrument that would be controlled by brain waves or thought."

http://www.wichita.edu/insidewsu/n10-7-99/Making%20music.html

Blank Faced Avatar

00:20 / 05.08.01

There's a programme which teaches people to overcome 'Grand Mal' epilepsy through biofeedback. Before treatment they suffer 50 fits of paralysis a day. They get to see feedback of brain waves which climb steadily prior to fits, and simply experiment with thinking/meditating until they find memories/meditations which they can see make the brainwave fall back to normal. Every patient finds different techniques, but this simple system effectively cures the chronic symptoms ie down to less than 1 attack a day.

Molly Shortcake

18:56 / 08.08.01

On a somewhat related note: Video games more shocking then ever

The Associated Press published a photo of a video game controller that jolts the user if his or her character suffers damage. The must-have gift for video game fanatics this Christmas could well be a gadget that momentarily paralyzes your hands when your character takes a hit in cyberspace. Mad Catz, the company devising Bioforce, thinks it has a winner, and some people who tried it at a video game convention think it's great, the Associated Press wrote in its report.

Just the thing to violently ruin your trance.

from fatbabies.com

09:24 / 09.08.01

It's probably still on wired or at least in the last one or two issues of the magazine...talking about brain interfacing used by the disabled (mostly) or tap into people who otherwise have no other alternative. Another article in particular, sat well since it showed how different approaches to designing technology for the impaired develop. Whether its trying to be more intermediary by addressing a "quick fix" or better method for the consumer or going at the "big problem" and trying to mask or reroute the disability.

I'll try to post a url or text block from it after I get a much needed nap...

[ 09-08-2001: Message edited by: netbanshee ]

09:28 / 09.08.01

Here's the synopsis for the articles mentioned above...