Controlling Computers By Thought: The Beginning Of A New Era

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a little of the Brain Computer Interface (BCI) and how it can be
implemented. If the Brain Computer Interface works in a full fledged way how it would allow or make it possible to control computers by thought which in turn can be applied in changing our lifestyle, so that any work can be done just by a thought of the brain. The BCI is implemented by various techniques out of which Electroencephalogram (EEG) is the one which is widely used in which the electrical pulses or the electrical signals of the brain are collected and decoded to control a computer and make the work done.

MAIN TEXT

1. Introduction

It is not to be mentioned again how Computers are changing our lifestyle. Well, a question arises in all of our minds that what would happen if we could control Computers by thought.
Yeah, it goes right to the point that we all will gain a lot of weight if we could control computers by thought. It is because all our work would be done which would just be a thought away of our mind. All the electronic systems or gadgets would be connected to the computers and the computers would be connected to our minds or more specifically our brain, which would take instructions from all our thoughts and work accordingly. As for example, suppose we need to take tea, and we think of that, what happens next is the computer connected to our brain or mind would take that instruction and decode it and activate the electronic teapot to make the tea for us and which would be served by a robot in front of us. Well, is it turning out to be a science fiction? Absolutely not, because research is being going on this subject for a long time and scientists are coming close to a point which would make a complete operable system of the computers which would be controlled by thought.

2. Implementation

Well, to implement the connection between the Human Brain and the Computer we are to
make an interface between the two which is called the "Brain Computer Interface" (BCI).
Here we are to detect the responses or signals which are detectable and represent responsive or intentional brain activity. This places increased emphasis on detection mechanisms for finding out if and when the desired response occurred. Brain-computer interface experiments involve considerable system support. A typical setup includes four areas requiring detailed attention: preparation, presentation, detection and control.
Preparation here relates the fact of including all those activities required to adjust the detection apparatus where the participating person is also taken into account (which means also preparing the person to participate). This may require donning special headgear, mounting electrodes (in a few cases implanting electrodes surgically), or attaching sensing instruments to the person in other ways. Preparation also includes extended tuning sessions involving the person and the detection apparatus to make sure of the mechanisms can detect the particular brain responses under study when it takes place. A few adjustments may also be required which may include repositioning the electrodes, setting normal or default values,
calculating the standards, instructing the person what to do and what not to, and so on.
Presentation includes all those activities involving the stimulation of the person on whom experimentation is being done in order to elicit the particular brain response under study. In this process the experimenter controls the presentation details to study their relationships with the response, using such parameters as intensity, duration, timing rate and so on. Most presentation techniques today involve the visual field in some way partly due to the site of brain activity (visual cortex) lying closer to the scalp than several other important sites, and
partly due to the availability of inexpensive computer display devices.
Detection includes all those activities and mechanisms involved in recording and analyzing electrical signals (event-related potentials or ERP's) from the sensing elements or instruments attached to the person's involved in the experiment (on whom the experiment is being carried out) quickly and reliably so that it doesn't become a controlling factor in the experimental design or in carrying out the experiment successfully. Most techniques involve the Electroencephalogram (EEG) in some way and may include wave-form averaging over a number of trials, autocorrelation with a known signal or a known shape, Fourier transformation to detect relative amplitude at different frequencies (power spectrum) and other mathematical processes. Most of the analysis can be carried out with an inexpensive computer having the facility of digital signal processing (DSP) (a DSP apparatus fitted to a computer), software and display components, usually the same machine that presents the stimulus. Out of all the detection components, Feedback to the person on whom the experiment is being carried out is also an important component of most of the detection setups and is never to be neglected so as to improve the performance.
Control includes all of those uses of detected subject responses for manipulating the
environment in some desired way. Many experiments involve such manipulations as their
central component in order to demonstrate the feasibility of controlling computers or other apparatus using the brain alone, as a prosthetic technique for those with limited abilities to manipulate the environment in other ways.

RESULTS

Experiments carried out with the brain responses which were studied in this survey include reading and writing characters and words from and to a display device of a computer, moving displayed targets around a computer screen to stimulate device control and mapping areas of high or low brain activity following stimulus resentation in order to support prediction.

CONCLUSIONS

The Experimenters feel that BCI techniques have a big potential for useful applications for individuals with reduced capabilities for muscular response. BCI techniques can be used for communicating (as for example making one's needs known, writing) and for manipulating devices (Computer, television, microwave oven, wheelchair etc.) which are important targets for Brain-Computer control.
BCI techniques might offer useful ways to all individuals useful ways to interact with the environment. The BCI techniques, someday, might be used for inputting huge amount of text, graphics and various data into a computer without any hand operated device such as keyboard, mouse, joysticks etc. It might also happen that the need for any sort of computer display devices may come to an end as the output data would be returned to the brain directly. Several electronic games and other forms of entertainment would come into existence due to this wonderful way of responding. Certain field of jobs such as air-traffic control and piloting aircraft which needs a lot of good sense modalities, might put brain responses to good use.
The Brain Computer Interface might be used for curing mental disabilities, in a way such that if a mentally retarded person's brain is interfaced with a supercomputer having a huge amount of data and is programmed in such a way that if it gets any impulse or signal from the brain of that particular mentally retarded person which is having anomalies or if the signal seems to be abnormal then it is processed and sent back to the brain as a message so that the original brain signal or the impulse is rejected by the brain and is replaced by the one sent by the supercomputer. In other words, it can be said that the mentally retarded persons would be controlled by the computers or intelligent machines so as to improve their lifestyle. This point
might be hypothetical for now, perhaps, but they might -- one day -- become very real.
The world is a huge ball of knowledge and it is never possible for a particular or a single person to know everything that has already been invented or discovered. But the day when BCI would be developed to its extreme stage, it would be possible for a single person to know everything that has been discovered or invented. Or it can be said that all the human beings would possess the same amount of knowledge. It would be implemented by implanting such a chip in the human brain which would decode all the signals of the brain and send it to a supercomputer where the signals would be processed and if the computer finds that the brain has a query about anything, it would search for that information stored in the servers and then send the information back to the chip implanted in the brain which in turn would encode the signals received from the computer back to the impulses of the brain and send it to that particular part of the brain which needed or requested for the information or data.
Several points in this paper may appear to be hypothetical and unreal but as research is going on in this topic let's hope for the best and hope that BCI becomes a completely operable system very soon. We have reached at a point where Professor Kevin Warwick of the Cybernetics Department at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom had already implanted a chip in his brain to interface it with a computer for the experiment. So, the day is not far when the future is going to fuse with the present......