Smart Industry 1/2020

simple system. In a demonstration at
Augmented World Expo 2019 in Munich,
Germany, Neurable showcased
a person interacting with virtual
items displayed through the VR headset
by thought alone. He was even
able to move within the VR setting
without using handheld controllers.
Neurable’s clients include architects
and interior designers who find it
especially interesting that the headset
can receive direct feedback from
the user’s brain. Without the need for
written surveys, they can detect how
each user feels about their virtual
surroundings, which helps to create
places in which people will feel good
and do better work.
Neurable’s software tools enable
integration with Unity, C++, and C#
development environments, and
the company also offers data export
capabilities and a web portal for 3D
data visualization and post-session
analysis.
Another example of this technology
entering the mass market is a meditation
headset produced by Muse.
The company claims that the device,
available from about €170, can
translate brainwaves into sounds. It
aids meditation by giving audible
feedback when rising brain activity
is detected. This can help users to get
into a state of deep relaxation as they
learn how to control the sound.
Let There Be Light
Increases in the brain’s oxygen levels
can also reveal neuron activity,
a method that is currently being investigated
at the Facebook Reality
Labs (FRL). Near-infrared light can be
used to measure blood oxygenation
in the brain from outside in a noninvasive
way. Neurons consume far
more oxygen from the blood when
they are active. Shifts in oxygen levels
within the brain can be measured by
a device that works in a similar way to
a pulse oximeter – the clip-like sensor
attached to a patient’s finger to
measure blood oxygen levels. Nearinfrared
light can pass through the
skull and back, allowing blood oxygenation
in the brain to be measured
from outside of the body in a nonin-
source ©: Quora
source ©: Openwater
vasive way – thus giving hints on current
brain activity. At Facebook’s lab
they are experimenting with a portable,
wearable device made from
consumer-grade parts with an eye on
mass production.
Facebook’s researchers have an ambitious
goal: to convert thought into
text and achieve a real-time decoding
speed of 100 words per minute with
a 1,000-word vocabulary and word
error rate of less than 17 percent. To
make progress by comparative results,
the researchers are currently
engaging with a lab at the University
of California, San Francisco, that
is using invasive technology – a small
patch of tiny recording electrodes
temporarily placed on the surface of
seizure patients’ brains, to map back
to the origins of their attacks in preparation
for neurosurgery.
First results are promising, and brain
activity recorded while people spoke
has been converted to text on a computer
screen. A small set of spoken
words and phrases was decoded in
real time, a first in the field of brain–
computer interface (BCI) research,
and the ongoing work aims to translate
much larger vocabularies with
dramatically lower error rates.
Window to the Brain
Openwater’s new
headset resembles a
beany hat, but contains
near-infrared light emitters
that measure blood
flow in the brain. Originally
intended to help
diagnose brain damage,
it could one day enable
thought reading.
Sooner or
later, we will
be able to
read your
thoughts.
Mary Lou Jepsen
Openwater
There is still a lot of progress needed
within the algorithms and hardware
before this will lead to Facebook’s
aim of producing an affordable headset
that will allow people to dictate
with the force of thought alone.
Facebook is not the only company exploring
this technology. Silicon Valley
hardware engineer Mary Lou Jepsen
recently founded Openwater. The
company plans to build a headset
that resembles a beany hat to house
the near-infrared light emitters for
measuring blood flow. Openwater
is actually focusing on diagnosing
brain injuries or neurodegenerative
diseases but Jepsen believes that the
technology could be used to read
thoughts – sooner or later.
Jepsen’s assumption is supported by
experiments performed by Professor
Jack Gallant at the University of California,
Berkeley, eight years ago. With
the help of fMRI, he scanned the brain
activity of people as they watched
video clips. After analyzing the patterns
that occurred during watching
different footage, a computer was
able to process the activity patterns
in the brain to generate images that
bore a stunning resemblance to the
original videos.
Come Inside
Brain experts often compare noninvasive
methods of investigating
brain activities to listening to the
noise of a crowd from outside a stadium.
You may be able to determine
when goals are scored and maybe
deduce which team is winning from
the loudness of the reactions – but
you can hardly discern any other details
of the game.
To find out about these it is necessary
to go inside the stadium – and to
place many microphones in there in
different places. In regard to the brain
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