The BCI society was created to
“to foster research and development leading to technologies that enable people to interact with the world through brain signals”.
OpenBCI.com initiates as a community driven open-source platform for makers and consumers. Self-printable EEG-headsets, ciruit boards, software and learning courses allow enthusiasts, researcher and consumer to get a cheap and easy entry to experiment with the technology.
Miguel Nicolelis and his team succeded in an experiment that allowed thought transfer between two mouse brains through the internet over a distance of 7000 miles. A nice Video shows the setup. According to the scientist the experiment had a 70% correct rate.
Around this time two brilliant papers reseraching about how BCI's will affect Computer Games and VR. The first paper is showing reserach of different universities on VR and virtual game pads.
The second paper asks the question
why a healthy individual would want to use a BCI and applying knowledge from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to the design of
BCI for games.
Ayesa Paul and Dr. Amit Lal at DARPA surgically implanted micro-platforms in Manduca sexta Moths. The goal for DARPA was to create remote-controlled or GPS-guided bugs that are able to transmit data from onboard
sensors and cameras.
Electrocorticography (ECoG) technologies trialled in humans by Eric Leuthardt and Daniel Moran from Washington University enable a teenage boy to play Space Invaders with
his mind.
ECoG measures the electrical activity of the brain from above the cortex, beneath the dura mater. ECoG are less invasive
than implants inside the cortex but deliver better signal than electrodes that measure non-invasive from outside the skull.
Tetraplegic Matt Nagle controls an artificial hand using a
Cyberkinetics’s BrainGate chip-implant, implanted in Nagle's right precentral gyrus (motor cortex).
Allowing Nagle to control a robotic arm by thinking about moving his hand as well as a computer cursor, lights and TV.
Thomas DeMarse, professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida, cultures 25,000 neurons to
fly a fighter jet aircraft simulator. In the experiment the neurons are taken from
a mouse's brain cultured in a petri dish. The living neural network rapidly
begins to reconnect itselves. To control the pitch and yaw functions of the simulator a grid of 60 electrodes is placed underneath the cells.
Dr. Rainer Goebel from the University of Maastrich conducted
an experiment with MRI’s where two
participants play PONG against another just using their mind. No implants where used and the software was able to run in real-time.
William H. Dobelle implants a BCI into blind patient "Jerry's"
head and restores limited sight. The system feeds images from a digital camera to a belt-mounted signal processor into the
visual cortex.
Starting 2002 Dobelle offers this method commecially. Blind Jens Naumann drives a car around a parking ground using this device.
The first international BCI meeting takes place at Rensselaerville Institute, New York with 50 delegates and 24 labs participating. This marks the beginning of the bloom of this research field.
John K. Chapin and Miguel Nicolelis succeed first time to have mice controlling a robot arm with an implated Brain-Computer Interface in experiments. Two years later they proof the same with monkeys.
Dr. Phil Kennedy, neuroscientist and founder of Neural Signals, invents the neurotrophic electrode and
has it implanted it the brain of locked-in patient Johnny Ray. With some practice Ray was able to move a cursor on a screen and type words.
The first Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) gets approved by the American Food and Drug Administration as
a treatment for essential tremor and Parkinson's disease (PD).
Babak Taheri, at University of California, Davis shows these new electrodes capable to measure brain activity. The advantages of such
electrodes are:
(1) no electrolyte used,
(2) no skin preparation,
(3) significantly reduced sensor size, and (4) compatibility with EEG monitoring systems.
Scientists Farwell and Donchin successfully test a BCI for spelling letters based on Event-Related Potentials (ERP).
A 6*6 grid of letters and digits is displayed on a computer screen, each flashing randomly. The user is asked to silently count the flashes of the letter she/he wants to select.
The correct letter is found by syncronizing the counting speed read out through an EEG with the flashings of the P300-speller.
Within the 1980ies scientests around
Apostolos Georgopoulos at Johns Hopkins University conducted experiments to read signals from groups of brain cells, process them and conduct predictions what certain brain-action-potential could mean. For example, see neurons firing in a monkeys
motorical cortex and then tell what limb the monkey was wanting to move.
Jacques J. Vidal, a Belgium researcher at the University of California, coined the term “Brain-Computer Interface”. In his report Vidal describes BCIs as “utilizing the brain signals in a man-computer dialogue” and “as a mean of control over external processes such as computers or prosthetic devices”.
Dr. Jose Delgado, a Spanish Neuroscientist at Yale University, implanted a device that he called the "stimoceiver" into the cortex of a bull in Cordoba. He could push a button on his radio transmitter and the raging bull instantly stopped raging and stood still (CNN report on YouTube). Here a well written article about Dr. Delagados life and work.
Hans Berger, a German psychiatrist,
made the first EEG recording of human brain activity and called it Elektrenkephalogramm.
Using
the EEG he was also the first to describe the different waves
or rhythms which were present in the normal and abnormal brain, such as
the alpha wave rhythm (7.812–13.28 Hz), also known as "Berger's wave".
Richard Canton, a British physician and physiologist reported on 4th of August 1875 to the British Medical Association in Edinburgh that he had used a galvanometer to observe electrical impulses from the surfaces of living brains in the rabbit and monkey.