[comp.software-eng] EEG readers

jspear@afit-ab.arpa (Jon L. Spear) (10/07/88)

In article <549@dms.UUCP> albaugh@dms.UUCP (Mike Albaugh) writes:
>[snip]
>	My personal belief is that first you get the underlying foundation
>right, then you add mice/windows/data_gloves/eeg_readers/etc... [snip]
                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^

[sorry if this is too far off the subject and software engineering, but...]

That reminds me. A few years ago I read an article in Science News or
similar magazine about a device that could read realtime EEG-like
(electroencephalogram) data and recognize some patterns. It was a long way
from reading minds, but it (with a cooperative subject) could be trained to
respond to a set of brain activity patterns that resulted from thinking
about certain things (probably some form of nearest-neighbor pattern
recognition). It did this sensing from a short distance away, without the
usual stick-on electrodes. Sounded pretty far out. I never saw anything in
this area again.
	EEG readers seem like they could be really useful as computer input
devices, especially for the handicapped. Anyone know what, if anything, has
happened in this area?

-Jon
-- 
----
random rumors from Jon Spear, Comp Eng Student | With computers we can make a
jspear@afit-ab.arpa or @blackbird.afit.af.mil  | billion mistakes every second.

lmiller@venera.isi.edu (Larry Miller) (10/21/88)

In article <624@afit-ab.arpa> jspear@blackbird.afit.af.mil (Jon L. Spear) writes:
>In article <549@dms.UUCP> albaugh@dms.UUCP (Mike Albaugh) writes:
>>[snip]
>>	My personal belief is that first you get the underlying foundation
>>right, then you add mice/windows/data_gloves/eeg_readers/etc... [snip]
>                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^
>
	And there follows a discussion of having heard about such things.


Work along this line was funded by ARPA at several locations about a decade
ago, including espcially UCLA and Illinois.  The most successful work was by
J. Vidal at UCLA:


%A Jacques J. Vidal
%T Real-Time Detection of Brain Events in EEG
%J Proceedings of the IEEE
%V 65
%N 5
%D May, 1977
%P 633-641


Larry Miller				lmiller@venera.isi.edu (no uucp)
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