I am working on such a BCI for with my girlfriend who's a graduate student in cognitive neuroscience.<p>It's actually based on a very simple concept that most people here will have stumbled upon in algorithms 101: binary search.<p>The subject is put in an fMRI machine and is looking at a screen like this[0] where the middle word of the dictionary is presented.<p>The subject can then perform either "inner speech" (singing or reciting in your head) if the word s/he wants to spell is before the one currently displayed, or "mental imagery" (imagining drawing some figure in space) otherwise.<p>As you probably know the time complexity of binary search is O(log(dictionary_length)) instead of a classic letter speller which would be O(alphabet_length*word_length) so this method is much quicker in most cases.<p>I would love some HN input on this!<p>This is a demo that you can play around with: <a href="https://sophia.science/biword/" rel="nofollow">https://sophia.science/biword/</a> [0]<p>And this is a complete explanation of the paradigm: <a href="https://sophia.science/biword/Biword_poster.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://sophia.science/biword/Biword_poster.pdf</a>
One thing not mentioned in the article is that we can not currently make implants that work after a few years because of scarification. ECOG devices might work but those have worse properties than implants.
Pretty much the basis of "magic" in the hyper-sci-fi RPG Numenera [0], set a billion years in a post-post-post-apocalyptic future, where "mages" are called "nanos" (you can guess why.)<p>[0] <a href="http://numenera.com" rel="nofollow">http://numenera.com</a>
The line in the article about VR-brain interfaces is I believe a reference to <a href="http://www.neurable.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.neurable.com/</a><p>This tech is exciting. Imagine a wizard game where you literally meditate to recover mana.
Suggest anyone interested to check out some related material:<p>Hope 2016 - Hacking the brain [0]<p>Semantic Maps showing models used to predict brain activity using "Voxels" [1]<p>0: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1JPnHtLYCQ&index=75&list=PLcajvRZA8E099SG5JGAaS56NMHPTbuHIV" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1JPnHtLYCQ&index=75&list=PL...</a><p>1: <a href="http://gallantlab.org/huth2016/" rel="nofollow">http://gallantlab.org/huth2016/</a>
Pay walled, but I don't even need to read the article. If you have a working proposal for consuming information faster than my eyes and ears can do it and also a working proposal for controlling a computer faster than I can do it with a keyboard; with the constraint that the method that does this doesn't kill me immediately or eventually, then you have my attention. Until that day happens, I do not care and I will focus my time and attention on things that are actually possible.