Electroencephalography: Virtual Reality may have a new friend

Telepathy has been the stuff of myth that is cool if you had, not so cool in portrayal on film. But apparently we are that much to getting our Professor Xavier on with an experiment recently executed by the University of Washington.

In a University of Washington-led experiment, a student succeeded in playing a video game whilst wearing an EEG cap, a technology that measures and relays voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain. Okay, that’s cool we guess. Oh did we say the student was playing the game by using his EEG cap to control the hand of a friend who happened to be miles away from the test subject? Yeah. That happened.

The test subject with the EEG cap, for example, would just have the mere thought of shooting a cannon in the game and his thoughts would transmit impulses to the second subject who, automatically and without cue, would carry out the relay by moving his hand. The reaction accuracy measured up to 83%. Real eerie stuff. We also find it interesting that a video game was used in the test of motor skills, and by extension, this has us thinking about the application of such technology. Controlling a game character with thought, maybe give paraplegics and people with disabilities a chance at immersive gameplay? Zombie-remote control?! Truly a brave new world friends. That coupled with a VR helmet, we may be only a few years away from Ghost In The Shell-type of brain-hacking.