Gamers Control Firing in Doom via Brain Waves

At the Emerging Technology Conference that was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a group of researchers has shown evidence that gamers are able to interact with their favorite titles just by using their brain waves.

The scientists worked with a number of volunteers and were able to detect and interpret their alpha brain waves and to translate them into instructions that were followed by a computer.

Gerwin Schalk, who is a research scientist at Wadsworth Center, has shown video of a subject who was playing Doom, the classic first person shooter from id Software, using a joystiq to move around the game world and using his mind to target and shoot his enemies.

Schalk commented on the footage saying, “What I'm here to tell you is that this is not science fiction. This is an emerging reality.”

The subjects who were included in the study had already had their brains wired up in order to treat a number of issues, like epilepsy, but the researchers have said that in the future a number of other non-invasive methods could be used to track the brain waves, like EEG sensors applied directly to the head.

Being able to fire a gun in Doom is not much at first glance but combined with other breakthroughs, like a program that could track the brain waves of subjects to tell the difference between “Ah” and “Oh”, could mean that in the future gamers might be able to control all of their games using just their minds.

Of course, the technology at the moment is not sufficiently advanced but the amount of money linked to the gaming industry at the moment means that companies like Activision or Electronic Arts could try and work with the scientists in order to create a working mind-machine interface which can deliver benefits for both gaming and other industries.