Brain control: Shown here is the prototype of the commercial version of a new video-game controller from Emotiv Systems. The wireless headset has 16 embedded sensors that register electrical signals from the brain.
Credit: Emotiv
Do new controllers that purport to interpret brain activity really work?
Marco Della Torre sits in front of a huge flat screen, wearing a strange, spiderlike contraption on his head. He slowly raises his arms, and a virtual rock begins to glow and shake on-screen. It falters a little and then rises, hanging briefly in the air.
Della Torre, a product engineer at San Francisco startup Emotiv Systems, is demonstrating the company's new game controller--a headset incorporating sensors that can detect brain activity. Emotiv and its competitor, San Jose-based Neurosky, are developing the first gaming devices to use electroencephalography (EEG), a decades-old technology in which electrodes placed on the scalp measure electrical activity in the brain.
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