There was a lot of amazing news from the BCI community, as well as from the digital and brain health space, as February kicked off. This week in our news roundup; researchers are finding new ways to allow pairs of users to navigate remote objects using a BCI, such as a virtual spaceship; a teenager in Colorado built a brainwave controlled robotic arm out of mostly household objects, and is now bringing his inventions to the world through some cool avenues; some new emerging trends in digital health could, and some upcoming InteraXon events!


1// Two heads are better than one

One of our favorite stories this past week was this: a group of people steered a virtual spaceship to its destination using thought alone – and a brain computer interface. A few weeks ago we wrote about new research being done with a new monitoring method called ‘brain to brain communication’. What researchers are learning, and implementing in new projects, is that the combinion of the brain frequencies of multiple people generates better accuracy and control when using a BCI.

According to New Scientist:

“They developed a simulator in which pairs of BCI users had to steer a craft towards the dead centre of a planet by thinking about one of eight directions that they could fly in, like using compass points. Brain signals representing the users’ chosen direction, as interpreted by the machine-learning system, were merged in real time and the spacecraft followed that path”


2// Try this at home: robotic arms

Easton LaChappelle, now 17, started researching how to build robotic arms when he was 14. He built his first out of household objects and refurbished materials. It didn’t stop there, and LeChappelle kept improving on his design. First with a brainwave-controlled prosthetic, followed by a 3D printed brainwave-controlled robotic arm and a plans for a Kickstarter campaign. Check out the video below, and read the article in MAKE to hear about what this young and inventive engineer is up to next:

3// New trends in digital health

There’s new trends emerging in the field of digital health that are going to have going to have a big impact on consumers in the coming years. Personalized mobile health tech, data storage and Big Data, and health-focused startup accelerators are just a few. This past week Sean Chai blogged for ComputerWorld, talking about all of these and more:

“For all of the promise of digitally driven health care, technology futures often contain equal parts of hype and hope. IT must lead the way in sifting through the hype to develop an accurate picture of the benefits, costs, and risks of technology in the unique context of health care.”


4// Some upcoming InteraXon events

We are notorious jet setters, and the next two months are going to be travel-filled with lots of Muse demos! Here’s a quick preview

Feb 21st – 24th: Wisdom 2.0 (San Francisco)

March 8 – 12: SXSW Interactive (Austin)

April 20 – 23: FITC, The Design & Technology Festival (Toronto)

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The InteraXon news roundup is published weekly, every Sunday night, to recap trends and breaking news in the world of brain computer interfaces and thought controlled computing. Do you have a story you’d like to submit or share? Contact us at info@interaxon.ca (subject line “News Story”) or leave a comment here.

This week in our news roundup: the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory explain the engineering behind the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program; research from the TOBI research initiative could help with patient rehabilitation; combining traditional gaming controls with brain computer interfacing has great potential for the future of virtual reality gaming


1//60 Minutes features brainwave-controlled robotics from the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

A recent segment on 60 Minutes featured Robo Sally, an unassuming robot from the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Robo Sally is just one example of some breakthrough work being done at APL in upper body prosthetics controlled by brain or muscle signals. The work, as part of the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, was also featured in the John Hopkins student paper The News-Letter.

The prosthetic limbs being developed at APL, the same used in Robo Sally and shown on 60 Minutes, have more than 22 ranges of motion, sensory feedback on touch, and the ability to lift up to 20 pounds. A prosthetic arm would weigh the same as a real arm (9 pounds), allowing amputees more control, dexterity, and accuracy than any other brainwave-controlled prosthetic to date. Here’s a demonstration of some of the innovations from the program:

2// Research from the TOBI project could help with patient rehabilitation

The research project TOBI (Tools for Brain Computer Interaction) was a 4-year initiative funded by the European Commission in partnership with a variety of universities and research labs. TOBI commenced with a weekend workshop January 23rd- 25th, and announced new research on how brain computer interfaces are being used to help stimulate and rehabilitate muscles after a stroke. In the video below, researchers talk about the benefits of this new technique and provide insight into some future clinical applications

3// Combining BCI controls and virtual reality in gaming

A study was released this week that talks about the potential to combine brain computer interface control with traditional input options in virtual reality games. Think joysticks, highly immersive heads-up displays, and other types of game controllers. The results of the study found that use of a traditional game control did not have a negative impact on performance while using a BCI.

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The InteraXon news roundup is published weekly, every Sunday night, to recap trends and breaking news in the world of brain computer interfaces and thought controlled computing. Do you have a story you’d like to submit or share? Contact us at community@interaxon.ca (subject line “News Story”) or leave a comment here.

This week in our news roundup: the Discovery Channel highlights how the UPMC Rehabilitation Institute is using single unit recording to achieve greater accuracy and control with brain computer interfaces; an EEG headset to help prevent strokes has been developed in Israel; measuring pleasure stimuli using a consumer EEG headset from neurofeedback company MyndPlay; and beatboxing as seen through an MRI.


1// Using single unit recording to achieve greater control with a BCI

The team who helped a woman lift a cup using a brain computer interface, at the UPMC Rehabilitation Institute, are now working on a second study that uses single unit recording. What is single unit recording? This is a small grid in the brain that allows researchers to record activity from individual neurons, to achieve an even greater degree of control and accuracy of movement than the first study allowed. For a great description about some of the innovations from UPMC, from one of the researchers involved, check out the video below

2// NeuroKeeper develops EEG headset to help prevent strokes

Israel- based company NeuroKeeper recently announced that they are developing an external EEG headset, which could be used to give early warning signs of a stroke. The company and their advisors believe the headset could identify discrepancies in the users brainwave patterns, providing real time information and saving lives in the future. Reuters reported on the headset as well [Video]: the hope is that NeuroKeeper’s innovations will allow at-risk patients to monitor themselves at home and alert when they need to get to the hospital.

3// On a scale of 1 to 100, measure your pleasure

Our friends at UK-based neurofeedback company MyndPlay took 80 participants, gave them EEG headsets, and helped them through a series of “pleasurable experiments”. These included things like listening to music, winning contests, petting a cat, or eating chocolate. MyndPlay wanted to see what happened in the prefrontal cortex (a key part of our brain’s pleasure center) and what experiments ranked best on a linear scale. Fun, right? Check out the video to see their results:

4//Just for fun: beatboxing as seen through an MRI

The art of hip-hop meets a qualitative study of the human body. Researchers from USC have released a study [links to PDF] with an anonymous beatboxer from the Los Angeles area. They used an MRI to examine the linguistic mechanisms of his craft and how his jaw and head movements provide strategies for vocalization while performing.

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The InteraXon news roundup is published weekly, every Sunday night, to recap trends and breaking news in the world of brain computer interfaces and thought controlled computing. Do you have a story you’d like to submit or share? Contact us at info@interaxon.ca (subject line “News Story”) or leave a comment here.

In the second of this 2-part interview commentary on the research project Bicameral Music, Vaughan Macefield talks with InteraXon about his interest in performance, dance, and studying the nervous system.

In October 2012, Erin Gee announced a collaboration with neurophysiologist Vaughan Macefield (Australia) and roboticist Dr. Damith Herath (MARCS Institute) called ‘Bicameral Music’. Bicameral Music is a performance that Gee describes as combining robotics, technology and raw emotion. The team has been researching and mapping raw emotion, translating electric currents in the brain into a decipherable auditory experience. The end goal of their research is a symphony, performed live in Montreal, in 2013

Your recent research and collaboration focuses on music created by raw emotions, derived from electrical currents in the human brain. What is the inspiration behind this project?

As a neurophysiologist, I am interested in how the nervous system encodes various aspects of its environment via specialized sensory organs – with a particular interest in touch and proprioception (our ability to know the positions of our limbs in space, which is critically important in dance) – and how the sympathetic nervous system controls flow through blood vessels and controls sweat release. Given that blood flow through the skin decreases when we are aroused, excited, anxious or afraid, and we start to sweat in each of these states, ever since I have been recording these sympathetic nerve signals I have always been fascinated by how they provide a very precise measure of the emotional state of a person. Indeed, by tapping into the spontaneous or evoked bursts of skin sympathetic nerve activity (SSNA) – by inserting fine needles (microelectrodes) into a peripheral nerve – one can determine what “turns a person on” by asking them personal questions or showing them specific images.

My colleague, Assoc Prof Luke Henderson (University of Sydney), and I have recently been scanning the brain while recording these nerve signals, in order to identify how these signals are generated when a person is emotionally engaged. But the real inspiration for this project goes back to the mid-80’s, when I saw Montreal-based dance outfit La La La Human Steps perform in Sydney. I am a fan of modern dance, but I still remember this show very well. They had attached a cardiac microphone onto the chest of a member of the audience and connected it to a loudspeaker. As the dancers performed, the heartbeat became faster and faster, the dancers’ tempo accelerating accordingly. So, here we had a performance that was influenced by a member of the audience. That person happened to be me, and this snippet of experience has been in my memory all this time, and did not really surface until I met Erin when she performed with Stelarc and a robot in Sydney last year. I was watching this tall, beautiful woman with her amazing presence and it got me thinking: she would be great to talk to about this potential project, which had been on a very slow bake for about three years. So, I went up to Erin after her performance, complimented her and said a few corny things like, “Hey, do you like Laurie Anderson?” I suggested that she would be ideal to work with on a project I had in mind and we arranged to meet up for coffee the next day in inner-city Redfern. So, this would not have developed without Erin and her artistic and musical talents, and it has been a very fruitful collaboration thus far.


How do we ‘perform’ emotion?

Yeah, it’s true – everyone “performs emotion” differently, though their physiological effectors are the same. Everyone can break out into a cold sweat (so called because the blood vessels in the skin constrict and sweat is released), and may develop goosebumps (erection of our vestigial hairs). These responses are what also occur when we are trying to control our body temperature: our skin goes white (blood vessels constrict) and we get goosebumps (piloerection) when we are cold, our skin goes red (blood vessels dilate) and we sweat when we are hot. Indeed, this is the primary purpose of the sympathetic innervation of the skin, to control our body temperature, but it has also been commandeered as a means of emotional expression. Some people are more reactive than others; some people blush, and some people develop excessive sweating from the palms or armpits (hyperhidrosis) in embarrassing situations. Others may be able to suppress many of the physiological markers of emotional processing, and it is known that psychopaths have very blunted emotional responses. So, we perform emotion with a key set of players: skin blood flow, sweat release, heart rate and dilation of the pupils. We all know that our pupils dilate when we are aroused, and is known that pupillary diameter of two people emotionally engaged will mirror each other. Our pupils dilate when we are in love: a drug used to be was dropped into the eyes of young women to dilate the pupils and make them more attracitive – this drug was referred to as “belladonna” (beautiful woman).


Music is very mathematical; here you’ve taken a collection of raw neural data and converted it into numbers to create sound, using specialized software. Yet your plans for future performances using this data are very aleatoric. How do the elements of chance, and the logic of math, complement each other in your research?

There certainly are chance elements in the nerve signals I record, but they are governed by both higher-order and lower-order neural processes. Individual neurones are either silent or active. In binary terms they are either in the “0” or “1” state, and I use this to quantify the firing properties of individual neurones. Erin is very interested in this aspect, and has been using the nerve events (spikes) to generate percussive sounds that fit with the on-off nerve events.


How could the electrical signals that are recorded – and the resulting performance – be affected by stimuli like stress, sleep, food, or the ability to focus and concentrate?

Yes, everyone is different, but how they “perform” will be determined both by their “state and trait” – how they “feel” in general, day to day (trait), and how they feel now (state). So, current factors such as stress may well affect how they respond to emotional triggers. This is interesting, as both will influence the performance. A person who always experiences stage fright may well have a very amplified experience in the current context.


Could this research have possible medical applications, or cross-over into other areas of neuroscience?

This is actually very exciting, as I am interested both in the artistic aspects of this work (many scientists are interested in, and some participate in, the arts) and the potential applications. Indeed, given that how we express ourselves emotionally is key to how we are perceived by society, it may be possible to use approaches similar to those we are developing here to “train” the emotional expression of individuals for whom such expressions are difficult. By using non-invasive markers of emotional expression – skin blood flow, sweating, pupil diameter, heart rate and respiration – we may be able to amplify the emotional markers in people with autism spectrum disorder. My conversations with psychiatrist Prof Rhoshel Lenroot (University of New South Wales) indicate that this could be a potentially very fruitful area: a child with difficulty expressing emotions may well learn to interact more fully following training with a robot or avatar that amplifies his or her bodily responses to standard emotional triggers.

In October 2012, Erin Gee announced a collaboration with neurophysiologist Vaughan Macefield (Australia) and roboticist Dr. Damith Herath (MARCS Institute) called ‘Bicameral Music’. Bicameral Music is a performance that Gee describes as combining robotics, technology and raw emotion. The team has been researching and mapping raw emotion, translating electric currents in the brain into a decipherable auditory experience. The end goal of their research is a symphony, to be performed live in Montreal in 2013

We had the opportunity to speak with both Erin and Vaughan about their teams work. Here, in the first of a 2-part interview commentary, Erin gives some insight into the field of neural data and music. Inside: what inspired Bicameral Music, the teams relationship with the chance of music and the logic of math, and possible future implications of cybernetics.

This interview is the first of a 2-part series.


Your recent research and collaboration focuses on music created by raw emotions, derived from electrical currents in the human brain. What is the inspiration behind this project?

The inspiration came from my [Erin’s] direct engagement with materials presented to me by Vaughan. I personally have always had a very number-based relationship with music and its organization, as well as a fascination in technological devices.  When Vaughan first told me about the capabilities of his materials in his laboratory I mostly remembered thinking that the science behind this project was already very fascinating, there didn’t need to be very much narrative or concept put on top of it.  It became a question of translation, so I wanted to translate the emotional body through robotics and music, but I wasn’t satisfied by the solution of MIDI sounds or software. I wanted to return the emotions to robotic bodies, and I’m inspired and challenged by my work in making this happen. The world premiere of the work happens next year through Innovations en Concert a Montreal-based group that programs contemporary chamber music.  It is interesting to think of this project as a biotechnological extension of what “chamber music” could be.


How do we ‘perform’ emotion?

“Performance” begs the question of who the audience is.

From a tradition of performing arts, emotion is performed in many means.  For example, some performers may simply understand in their body how to hold their posture and alter their voice to simulate effects of stress or relaxation, others still may have a keen sense of using silence to evoke unsaid feelings in a tension between words.  There are some acting practitioners that hold the belief that people cannot “perform” an emotion without being at least somewhat affected through their bodily engagements—that our bodies play such an important role in how our brain registers emotion, that even a seemingly artificial “performance” might arouse psychological effects if done in a way that registers with previous emotional experiences in the body.

As for those in everyday life, everyone’s physiology seems to react differently to emotional stimuli. This probably plays down into very primal levels of how people’s individual bodies are set up to react to emotions through heart rate, breathing, sweat release, blood flow, even how tight certain sets of muscles become under emotional stress.  There is a complex relationship between one’s body and one’s psychology that results in unique physiological reactions to emotion, but nonetheless we seem intelligent enough to pick up on subtle emotional cues in the bodies of others, almost on a subconscious level.  I’m not sure if feeling an emotion constitutes a “performance” when there is no play or plot to perform as such, but these are questions I’m working through in this project.


Music is very mathematical; here you’ve taken a collection of raw neural data and converted it into numbers to create sound, using specialized software. Yet your plans for future performances using this data are very aleatoric. How do the elements of chance, and the logic of math, complement each other in your research?

The word aleatoric has a rich musical tradition in early composers that pioneered modern music, like Boulez, Stochhausen, also Cage. Xenakis and Ligeti used probability theory later to compose their works. Stochastic and chance operations were often very earnest attempts to get beyond the mathematical constraints of Western harmonic systems and seek out ways for arranging sounds much like sound is arranged in nature.  But nature brings its own complex mathematics that sometimes sound foreign or alienating when transmitted into musical form. I am curious if perhaps humans just weren’t physically constructed to understand certain elements of nature—our technologies can then step in and help us reach these understandings. Artists are continuously playing and pushing domains of representation—the advent of big data has already provided a context for this to happen in a significant way.

I find working with medical technologies and data to be both challenging and inspirational, because there is a constant back and forth between a natural experience and its technological codification.  I am writing software at the same time as I am developing the physical musical instruments so I need to be careful to keep my own physical constraints in mind, those of the motors, the weight of aluminum, battery life.  I suppose these physical realities are some of the most basic elements of “chance” that mess up the mathematics behind software, but I like this. I think is important to have elements of vulnerability, risk and spontaneity in math, why not.

While we are encoding emotional and physiological responses (which are themselves chance operations based off of probability) into musical patterns, the most significant chance is returning these codes beyond the software and into real technological bodies that have their own possibilities for re-complexifying the sound. For example, the tuning of the bars that I use will determine overtones that will offer differing qualities to the fundamental pitches of the mathematical renderings that will be coloured by the movement of the robotics themselves. I am also finding the sound of motors whirring to be a charming addition to the composition—the bodies of the robots are implicating themselves as they perform the human emotions. I think it’s a very important element to the work, to note the difference between the flesh-body of the human performer and the robotic body of her prosthesis, and to see them both as equals and not that one should be quiet for the other one as music occurs.


How could the electrical signals that are recorded – and the resulting performance – be affected by stimuli like stress, sleep, food, or the ability to focus and concentrate?

External factors are constantly modulating emotional performance—this is a normal part of emotions, it’s not out of scope to represent that. So far the performers that I have been in discussion with are excited for this challenge, and I’m going to be working with actors who are familiar with these kinds of challenges so it’s possible that this won’t be an issue to worry about too much. I would rather embrace this situation as a part of the honesty of the performance—this to me is part of the intimacy of the work, the trust and risk associated with taking this chance.


Could this research have possible medical applications, or cross-over into other areas of neuroscience?

I think that scientists are continuously challenged by new technologies that have the ability to process data more so than in previous decades. For example, I recently saw a graph displaying data gathered by NASA.  It appears not only is NASA gathering data about the natural world that is exponentially growing at an unforeseen pace, but also that there is now the ability through pattern recognition to build vast amounts of simulated data that is exponentially larger than the “real data”.  This says a lot about intersections between knowledge, our technological instruments, and the “real world’—when simulations provide us with more information than we have previously ever processed, it changes the way that data will be represented. This being said, the physical forms that this data takes is what helps us humans understand what its implications are and how to think about it.  Developing challenging new systems of representation is something that artists regularly engage in—these systems always carry scientific, political and cultural implications. While I don’t think I can claim accomplishing something on this scale through this project yet (though I can always remain open to being surprised), the challenges of a data-driven, technologically supported society will demand new ways of seeing, hearing, and experiencing through technological interfaces, whether this data be emotional, environmental, spatial, market-based or interpersonal.  I am excited that artists and scientists are working together in this respect.

While we were in Las Vegas debuting Muse to the world, some amazing things were happening in the world of BCI

Like this : research at the School of Medicine at Tsinghua University shows that it will one day be feasible to implement a minimally invasive brain computer interface procedure.

And: incorporating P300 (a process that reflects an individuals neural response to certain stimuli) in assistive gaming is a popular research topic right now. This month a paper was released that suggested ways to improve flexibility and accuracy in a BCI-controlled game.

The work of our colleagues in advancing BCI research continues to amaze us! We’re fortunate to get a chance to write about it here every week and share it with you.

We got a lot of questions about brain computer interfacing while we were at CES. Is Muse a BCI, and how is Muse different from clinical BCI set-ups? Even while this blog post isn’t directly about Muse, one researcher at the Qatar Assistive Technology Center gives a great definition and break down of what a BCI is, and how it differs from consumer products on the market today. Check it out here…

This week in our news roundup: Scientific American releases clips of very aleatoric brainwave music recorded simultaneously using EEG and fMRI (avant garde music aficionados, please put your hand up); University of California at Berkley’s study on brain mapping is now online in an interactive form; NeuroGaming announces dates for their 2013 conference, a hybrid gaming and BCI expo in San Francisco


1// NeuroGaming announces dates for the 2013 conference and expo

Are we at the dawn of the age of neurogaming? Zach Lynch, founder of the NeuroGaming Conference and Expo, thinks so. The event takes place May 1^st and 2^nd, 2013, in San Francisco California, and brings together some of the biggest game developers and producers of neurowear in the industry. Being called the E3 of BCI gaming, it’s not just limited to brain controlled games: think augmented reality, sensor devices, and keynotes from core people.


2// How the brain sort’s what we see

University of California at Berkley recently released an amazing interactive map, dubbed the ‘Brain Viewer’, that maps brain regions based on visual stimuli. The school recorded patients’ brain activity using fMRI, while they watched a movie, to see how the brain encodes visual information. The result is a database of thousands of categories, objects, and actions. You can explore it for free here.  Just to note: the interactive map uses a lot of RAM, and requires Google Chrome, so make sure you have all other apps shut down before you open the website


3// Just for fun: listen

Scientific American recently posted a video and podcast of music recorded directly from brainwave activity using EEG and fMRI technology. Take a listen here and at the Scientific American link above.

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The InteraXon news roundup is published weekly, every Sunday night, to recap trends and breaking news in the world of brain computer interfaces and thought controlled computing. Do you have a story you’d like to submit or share? Contact us at community@interaxon.ca (subject line “News Story”) or leave a comm

We’re writing this early in the morning from a tiny hotel room, on the Las Vegas strip, on the last day on CES 2013.

This week we debuted Muse at CES, along with previews of our suite of brain training games and exercises, the Brain Health System.

It was a week of first’s for our team. The first time we were exhibitors at the conference, the first time our entire staff team went together to showcase our technology, the first time we’ve opened up pre-orders for Muse, and the first time Muse was in the hands of the public since we announced our brain-sensing headband in 2012.

“The most striking thing about wearing the Muse is watching as your subjective, internal mental experience – the kind of thing you just feel in the basement of your brain – as it’s interpreted and articulated visually” – ReadWrite

“While the company is currently focused on the health benefits, their innovations could change the way people control their personal technology.” – Toronto Star

“It’s these sorts of technological wonders that draw around 150,000 people to CES annually” – CBC 

We spoke with hundreds of people this week, on and off the conference floor, about Muse and brainwave technology. Where this technology is at right now, the possibilities for the future, and where we see it going in the next 5 to 10 years. Making this technology accessible and affordable to all is and continues to be our goal, and conferences like CES help us make this a reality

We’re just a few months away from our first shipping date, and more excited than ever to get Muse in your hands.

You’re able to reserve your Muse at www.getyourmuse.com, and we’re still offering our CES price of $175 USD until January 15th. Enter your information and shipping address in the pre-order form, and when we’re ready to ship we’ll contact you to process the order.

Sending positive brainwaves from Las Vegas,

- From all of us at InteraXon

Our news roundup is usually a quick recap of industry highlights from the past week, but to celebrate the new year we’re doing something a bit different. 2012 was certainly active for the BCI community, and there was a lot of news that made global headlines. The rising interest in brainwave technology and curiosity in what it does, generated from an increase in news coverage, is a positive in our eyes.

We’d have a hard time picking just one favorite story from everything that we covered on this blog. Here’s our list of 12 stories that defined the brainwave industry, our top 12 of 2012.

Criteria? Reader favorites that were major technology breakthroughs, global success stories, debate that will have long lasting impact on how we use this technology, and interfaces for the benefit of humanity.

Join in the conversation by letting us know what you think on social media, or by emailing community@interaxon.ca. Do you agree with our list, or did we miss something?

Happy new year! We’ll see you in 2013


Bypassing spinal chord injury and severe paralysis with a BCI

It was a breakthrough that was a first-of-its-kind: a patient known as ‘S3′ with severe and longstanding paralysis moved a robotic arm using a brain computer interface, in a clinical study for BrainGate. The news made headlines around the world and quickly became a reader favorite.


Panasonic and Imec develop an external EEG headset to monitor Epilepsy

This external EEG headset was developed by Imec in partnership with Panasonic, and brought the goal of affordable, responsive, and wireless epilepsy monitoring systems one step closer to reality


Translating brainstates into music using EEG or fMRI

It’s music to our ears! Researchers in China have been working to create methods, using EEG or fMRI,that translate brainwaves into music and mimic human composition. Just one of many stories like this from around the world, working with music using brain computer interfaces or consumer grade EEG is something we’ll be hearing more about


On the feasibility of side channel attacks with brain computer interfaces

When the joint research report ‘On the Feasibility of Side Channel Attacks with Brain Computer Interfaces’ (Oxford, Berkeley, Geneva) was presented and published this year, it unintentionally sparked a media firestorm of debate, along with a global discussion on ethics, transparency and data integrity. Arguably one of the most significant reports to be released this year, it is also one you’ll hear talked about for years to come


NecoMimi makes the world’s ears wiggle

NecoMimi, the anime inspired brainwave-controlled cat ears, became a global phenomenon in 2012.  An overnight success that was years in the making, the headset is a single-sensor EEG device that reads the users alpha waves and translates that into the movement of the attached cat ears. We’re mega fans, and think we’ll be hearing more about these headsets in 2013.


MIT creates Brainput to recognize excessive workloads

Stressed? A team of researchers at MIT could help. Brainput, a wearable brain scanner, is designed to recognize excessive workloads and let the computer know when the user needs a break, based on brain states.  For a world where stress is a leading cause of health-related aliments, there could be a huge need for a BCI that gives you signals on when to step away from the computer and ‘shut down’.


The next generation of tattoos will be wearable BCIs

2012 saw huge advances in the engineering of epidermal electronics and wearable BCI tattoos. A wearable BCI tattoo (also known as a T3, or temporary transfer tattoo) like the one linked here that was developed at UCSD, are helpful for patients who require medical sensors such as heart rate monitors, but without the bulk. The T3’s can be worn for extensive periods of time (on an area like the neck), can endure everyday conditions, and have a high resistance to deformation. Because of their flexibility, it’s hoped that these T3’s could be used as unobtrusive human computer interfaces for the medical industry, or gaming, in the future


For individuals with severe motor impairment, research at the University of Warwick opens up new possibilities

2012 was a year for changing methods of communication involving brain computer interface technology. One example is Professor Christopher James’ work at the University of Warwick, researching ways to create a product that could deliver an ease of communication similar to networked point-to-point computer systems. For individuals with sever motor or dexterity impairment, as well as locked in syndrome, what could best be described as a “brain to brain communication” aided by a machine is a fascinating extensions of the current capabilities of BCI.


European Union funds brain mapping research in Albany and Italy

The Wadsworth Center (in Albany, New York) and Albany Medical Center received funding from the European Union to bring brain computer interface technology to Ital. The funding (to the tune of $3.7 Million) will be used to continue building brain mapping technology in partnership with Italy’s NeuroMed Institute. The funding will allow the hospitals to continue with specialized brain research. The results of this research could vastly improve the resources available for patient diagnosis, especially for neurosurgeons and neurologists, at hospitals in the years to come


A brainwave reading exoskeleton to help with stroke survivors rehabilitation

A brainwave reading exoskeleton, developed in partnership by Rice University and University of Houston, has received grants to continue research in how it can be used to help with stroke survivors’ rehabilitation


Emotiv works with eye tracking software developers to create integrated platforms for the EPOC

We were really excited to hear that Emotiv was working with eye tracking software developer SMI to created an integrated platform for their EPOC headset. The software measures eye movement data together with raw EEG data streams from the EPOC headset. The combination of eye tracking visualizations and EEG data is a powerful research tool that, in a single interface, has a lot of possibilities that we may see in future applications.


Whar better way to close our end of year ‘best of’ list than on a personal note?

After many years of hard work our brain sensing headband, Muse, was revealed to the world this fall. We’re proud of the work our colleagues in the industry do, and are excited that we can contribute to their ongoing research that furthers the development of this technology, and new ways of making it accessible and affordable to all.

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The InteraXon news roundup is published weekly, every Sunday night, to recap trends and breaking news in the world of brain computer interfaces and thought controlled computing. Do you have a story you’d like to submit or share? Contact us at community@interaxon.ca (subject line “News Story”) or leave a comment here.

We’re just writing to say ‘thank you’

Since we launched our crowdfunding campaign for Muse, our brain sensing headband, InteraXon has received pledges and support from all over the world.

We wanted to build a brain-sensing headband that could be worn comfortably throughout your day, everyday. Our original goal was $150,000. When we met our goal we had a very celebratory moment in the office. When we doubled our goal we all got pretty emotional (in the best possible way) realizing that our 4 years of hard work on Muse was becoming a reality.

If you could see our collective brainwaves right now, it would be a colorful frenzy of excitement and beta waves!

Thank you for bringing us one step closer to making brainwave technology an accessible, affordable reality for all

Thank you for emailing us with your excitement about what this technology can do now, and will do in the future

Thank you for sharing your ideas for awesome new apps you want to build with the Muse SDK

Thank you for your Brain Cat puns, hilarious social media challenges, and season 2 requests

Thank you for sharing in our vision of the benefits brainwave technology can bring to our lives

Thank you for your pledges

Thank you!

From
- the entire InteraXon team (and Brautigan, the Brain Cat)

They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas; but we hope that isn’t the case when Muse meets the Vegas lights in January. Right now we have our heads down with intense preparation for what will be the first Muse appearance of 2013: the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas January 8 – 11^th.  This is something we want everyone to know about! Unlike some of InteraXon’s conference keynote’s over the past 2 months, this conference will give delegates a chance to experience a handful of early previews from our brain training system in real time.

This week in our industry news roundup: the global need for prosthetics is growing quickly, and there’s also a place for brainwave controlled bionic limbs; a more affordable MEG system has been invented in Sweden and could have a huge impact on brain research worldwide.


1// Bionic limbs market expanding rapidly

Researchers working with bionic limbs continue to show innovations at a staggering rate, and the global market for prosthetics is also rapidly growing. Last month, a man who had lost his leg in a motorcycle accident climbed a 2000 step ascent using a mind-controlled bionic leg. This is just one recent example of ‘big strides’ forward in the field of prosthetics.

Prosthetic manufacturers are also developing technology that will allow patients who use their bionic limbs to make adjustments via a mobile app, from their smart phone or tablet. These new procedures and functionalities, that were once considered experimental, are becoming increasingly commonplace. It is expected that by 2017, bionic limbs (including ones controlled by the patients brainwaves) will be a global market of ~ $24 billion annually. Sports injury, accidents, and an ageing population will all contribute to the growing demand for bionic limbs with brainwave-controlled and mobile capabilities.


2// More affordable MEG systems are introduced

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a method used in brain mapping by recording magnetic fields. This research technique is important to brain research and neurofeedback, but has (until recently) been so expensive that few countries were able to afford the technology. A group of researchers in Sweden, from Chalmers University of Technology, have made a new MEG system which is more affordable than the current price tag ($3 million for the equipment, and $500,000 in annual operating costs)

The significant cost reduction means that MEG will be more affordable for more medical clinics in more countries, providing the ability to conduct new research about the brain. The new system aims to make MEG affordable for every hospital, with new tools for brain research.

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The InteraXon news roundup is published weekly, every Sunday night, to recap trends and breaking news in the world of brain computer interfaces and thought controlled computing. Do you have a story you’d like to submit or share? Contact us at info@interaxon.ca (subject line “News Story”) or leave a comment here.