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by mentos 1966 days ago
I often wonder about the parallels between reverse engineering games using memory inspection software like 'cheat engine' to trying to reverse engineer the brain using a BCI.

For example if you want to find the memory address for your guns ammo you search for a start value in memory say '30', get all addresses that match that value, fire the gun and then find which of those addresses now have the value 29. Continue the search until you narrow down the memory address to just one. Then you can use that address to query the ammo for a 3rd party program that alerts you that you're low on ammo or even write to the memory address to give yourself more ammo..

Obviously the brain isn't as discrete but I feel like if I could play around with a BCI I could find fun signals for when I'm thinking about 'apples' vs 'oranges' and slowly build up an interface.

Have you been able to use a BCI to detect when you're thinking about something specific?
2 comments
mattkrause 1966 days ago
There's a huge chunk of neuroscience devoted to questions like this.

Several groups have shown that they can "decode" a remembered image from brain activity. This is comparatively easy when the images are simple and there are only a few possibilities, but can generalize to larger sets of images and even (sort of) never-before-seen ones. Sensory and motor information is relatively accessible; I don't know that anyone's making great progress decoding thoughts like "I should be home by 8pm".

If this is up your alley, you may want to check out work done by Frank Tong's lab at Princeton (e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1808230/) or Jack Gallant's group at UC Berkley (e.g, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381191...), among others.

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throwaway3699 1966 days ago
I thought about buying an OpenBCI kit to try something like this, but I think there's just not enough sensor resolution to get anything meaningful in the way you're suggesting. The strongest signals by far come from muscle movement, too, so that tends to be the basis of interfaces.

(FWIW: absolutely not an expert)

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