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Television
has controlled our mind for long enough! The engineers at Haier have turned
the table on the boob tube.
Behold, the "Brain Wave" remote control that lets you change the channels .... with your mind!
Brian Heater of Engadget gave it a spin: Link
While governments across the globe have been trying to figure out how to control the minds of their enemies for centuries, this practice is already possible in the animal kingdom. In fact, Cracked has a list of 5 incredibly creepy methods of animal mind control that are going on right now.
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The roundworm caenorhabditis elegans is about 1 mm long when fully grown. Over time, scientists have mapped every cell in its body, including all 302 neurons in the brain and the approximately 5,000 connections between them. The brain is small enough that they’re even able to control the worm’s actions:
A team at Harvard University has built a computerized system to manipulate worms—making them start and stop, giving them the sensation of being touched, and even prompting them to lay eggs—by stimulating their neurons individually with laser light, all while the worms are swimming freely in a petri dish. The technology may help neuroscientists for the first time gain a complete understanding of the workings of an animal’s nervous system.
The researchers control the worm by shooting lasers at it:
Because the worm’s body is transparent, sharply focused lasers, pointed with an accuracy of 30 microns, could turn on or suppress individual neurons with no need for electrodes or other invasive methods. Leifer placed a microscope on a custom-built stage to track the worm as it swam around in a dish. He also wrote software that analyzed the microscope’s images to locate the target neurons, then pointed and fired the lasers accordingly.
Link | Photo: University College, London
You may not have the psionic power of X-Men’s Professor X, but Carmaker Toyota and research lab RIKEN have created the closest thing in real life: a wheelchair that can be controlled by thought.
The device scans brain waves through sensors in a cap. In 125 thousandths of a second, the brain-controlled wheelchair can turn a thought into a command to turn the chair left or right or to move it forward. To stop, however, the user must puff out his or her cheek, activating a sensor placed there. [...]
To best pilot the wheelchair, don’t try too hard, suggested RIKEN scientist Andrzej Cichocki, leader of the project.
"It works best if you imagine playing the piano with either hand while turning the wheelchair or, for instance, jogging, to [make the chair] move forward," Cichocki said. "After two to four weeks of training, the accuracy is nearly perfect and it becomes effortless."
