I am one of those people.
Yep, I can control a computer with the power of thought alone. As long as I’m inside a functional magnetic resonance machine at the time, that is. This morning I was a subject on a study investigating whether people can activate specific parts of their brains, based on discrete punishment/reward feedback only.
First I had electrodes attached to my arm and foot, and had to clench and relax my hand or foot in response to visual cues from goggles I was wearing. Then I would repeat it, but only imagining moving my hand or foot, not actually moving them. This allowed the fMRI machine to map the regions of my brain involved in motion.
Then for the main experiment, I was shown one of two different visual patterns, for around 10 seconds, with rest periods of 15 seconds between each pattern. During the pattern I had to imagine clenching either my foot or my hand, and during the rest period I had to specifically NOT think of that, so as to create a contrast. If I did it correctly I received a dollar each time. I wasn’t told which pattern corresponded to hand and which to foot.
Anyway, I was able to work out which pattern was which, and trigger it correctly most of the time, even though the triggering threshold was adjusted to become less sensitive as the experiment continued. So I was able to control the computer (and make a fair amount of money) with thought alone. How AWESOME!!!!
The proceeds? Getting me this.
« Hide it
![[>]](../../../../images/button_forward.png){kind=small}
