Neuro feedback devices that read your mind are here

Mind-reading devices read the movement of pupils, heart rates and brain impulses. They will be able to predict human movement, action and thought

A range of medical, entertainment and enterprise possibilities have gained ground with the mainstream applications of neuro feedback devices. 

Medical experts have been working on understanding the complexity of the brain for centuries. Recent decades have witnessed various breakthroughs where impulses from the brain have been articulated for human understanding. 

The neuro feedback feature in Apple’s augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) headset Vision Pro has brought the concept of “mind reading” devices into mainstream application. 

Let’s understand how this works in the Vision headset, which has 12 cameras, five sensors, six microphones and more than 4K per eye video resolution, according to the company. “The high-performance eye tracking system in Apple Vision Pro uses high-speed cameras and a ring of LEDs that project invisible light patterns on to the user’s eyes for responsive, intuitive input,” Apple says. A fully three-dimensional user interface is controlled by “the most natural and intuitive inputs possible — a user’s eyes”.

Says Sterling Crispin, a neurotechnology expert who worked on the project: “Your pupil reacts before you click, in part because you expect something will happen after you click. So you can create biofeedback with a user’s brain by monitoring their eye behaviour, and redesigning the UI in real time to create more of this anticipatory pupil response. It’s a crude brain computer interface via the eyes, but very cool. And I’d take that over invasive brain surgery any day.”

This pupil response feature has brought neuro feedback, or mind-reading ability, to consumer products in its most ambitious avatar so far. Nasa has been using neurofeedback for its pilots for a while. “A scientist working on pilot training at Nasa’s Langley Research Centre in Hampton, Virginia, came up with a way to translate brainwave output to characterise attention levels,” Nasa says. The monitoring of attention levels of pilots during training was done using spectacles made by Narbis. This is among the various efforts that have set the tone for various new use cases for neurofeedback applications. 

Tan Le, Founder of Emotiv, a bio informatics company, has many predictions. “We will track our brain data like our daily step count. I believe brain data will become a metric as commonly accepted as heart rate variability or daily step count. Athletes, professional gamers and everyday people will become accustomed to using brain data to track their behavioural and cognitive performance,” Le wrote in Forbes.

According to Le, consumer EEG devices (electroencephalograms) that pick up electrical signals emitted by the brain to track metrics such as attention, stress and cognitive load will be commonly used. Even companies will use neurofeedback to personalise consumer and employee experiences. Companies like Narbis and Muse offer consumer EEG devices, many of which use artificial intelligence (AI) for processing brain impulses. 

A combination of efforts from the medical and the entertainment industry will accelerate the pace of neurofeedback devices. Some thought-to-speech technologies are maturing rapidly as their accuracy increases. Most have roots in medical breakthroughs to help people who are unable to talk. However, as these neurofeedback technologies mature in the health care world, they will increasingly spill over to the personal entertainment and the corporate world. 

Predicting the next thought or action, or a word that a human considers even a split second before it happens, is a tremendous achievement. As with many of these science fiction technologies, the scope for misuse is as high as the potential for delivering rewarding experiences. 

Mind-reading devices are here. These will read the movement of pupils, heart rates and brain impulses. They will be able to predict your movement, action or thought. Lenses, sensors and AI will soon know what humans want even before they know it themselves.