Coming soon: cheap and productized consumer-grade brain-computer interfaces (BCI). These “everyman’s EEG devices” are primarily sold as game controllers, but surely they could also be made into a tool for research and experimentation at home.

Why is BCI an interesting thing? Because it offers a direct way of interfacing with the computer, from brain activity to computer input – no need to translate the signals to muscle movements and mechanical motion first.

And why are consumer-grade BCI devices an interesting thing? First, because they are cheap due to mass-production, non-clinical applications, cheaper components, etc. Second, because at their core they must, in the current technological level, be some kind of EEG devices.

An EEG device can monitor your brainwaves, and your brainwaves essentially tell what your current state of alertness is – therefore an EEG device monitors your level of alertness.

Now, a brainwave monitoring device can be used to provide feedback about the current state of alertness to the user. For example: a user does or thinks something, and the monitoring device indicates whether the brainwaves move towards “relaxation” or “concentration”. Through this kind of neurofeedback mechanism, a user can learn to control the level of alertness at will. For example, if one suffers from anxiety in crowds, one could first learn the way to efficiently calm down, then go among the crowd and keep oneself calm using the learnt technique.

Examples of these consumer-grade BCI products are Emotiv EPOC (coming late 2008) and the OCZ Neuro-Impulse Actuator. At least Emotiv offers an SDK for programmers and seems to support wireless too (through a proprietary protocol, of course). Exact details and specifications of both systems just do not seem to exist, and marketing material often twists the truth, so it’s best to not speculate further. You can, however, read a review about the OCZ device.

If you’re good with electronics, there’s also the OpenEEG, which is an Open Source project to build an EEG. From these three, OpenEEG seems closest to a flexible research tool.

I’m truly hoping that one of these devices could be harnessed/hacked/modified to be a tool also for those people who are willing to do more experimentation and who are not content with just blowing up three-dimensional texturemapped zombies. This means, my dear reader, people like you! When those devices are out, and there is more factual information, expect a follow-up.