The technology to detect brain wave states has been available for a while, but Ologic and Neurosky have created a computer controller that detects two brain waves. They?ve assigned the concepts of ?attention? and ?meditation? to the two brain waves. I tried to test their headset, but I have too much hair for it to work, so we had our correspondent, Matthew Strebe, try it out.
They had us in a room in the game HalfLife, navigating with the mouse. The focus of the game was to move the objects on the screen. ?Attention? moves the object toward you (using the gravitation device) and ?meditation? levitates the object. I was unable to to get anything to work because my hair got in the way. Matt, however, was able to move and levitate many of the objects on the screen.
I talked to Dr. KooHyoung Lee, the CTO at Neurosky. He said that they were able to test the product on a small sample of ADD children and Alzheimer?s sufferers. The ADD children showed an improvement in concentration in as little as two weeks. Most showed improvement within three months. Sadly, there was no significant improvement in the Alzheimer?s sufferers. He was quick to point out that their technology was only tested on a small sample, which made me like him even more.
This technology has been around for a while, but I like that there are companies out there trying to harness the power of our minds.
