Brain Interface Design & Development

Sleep

WakeMate – wireless wristband with accompanying iPhone app and website uses an accelerometer to analyze sleep and integrates with iPhone alarm clock app to wake you up when you’re supposedly ready.  View charts of your sleep data online. Review in Wired here.

Zeo Personal Sleep Coach – headband with silver layer that picks up electromagnetic brain waves and tracks time spent in various sleep cycles.  Integrates with custom bedside alarm clock to wake you up when ready, and display data about sleep habits on LCD screen.  Oreilly technical explanation of Zeo headband here.

SleepTracker – wristband device that tracks sleep cycles and wakes you up at an opportune moment.

Relaxation & Wellbeing

Wii Vitality Sensor – accessory for the Nintendo Wii that measures pulse, and presumably show you biofeedback info on screen.

WildDivine – videogame with sensors that measure heart rate and galvanic skin response to guide you through relaxation process.

BrainBall – game where users compete to become more relaxed.  Uses EEG sensors to move a ball.

Medical

Airstrip OB – delivers maternity ward patients’ heart rates, contraction patterns, and other health data to doctors’ mobile phones in real time.  Data sourced directly from hospital databases.

Exercise & Calorie Burning

FitBit – wireless device with accelerometer that tracks movement, calculates amount of time and energy spent at work, at rest, walking, running, etc, and transfers data to accompanying base station.  Users can analyze and see data charts on web site.

BodyBugg - armband caloric expenditure calculator that uses a variety of sensors, including accelerometer, heat flux, galvanic skin response, and skin temperature to calculate calories burned.  Downloads data to computer.  Technology explained here.  See also the BodyMedia FIT.

Yamaha BodiBeat – heart-rate monitor and mp3 player that curates your playlist to suit your exercise level.

MapMyRun – GPS iPhone app that maps distance and times of run.  Social-networked to browse other peoples’ runs.  Also see RunKeeper.

Nike+ – the famous Nike products, including sneakers and wrist-bads, that measure exercise stats such as pedometer, speed, pulse, and chart and share them online.

WalkingSpree – pedometer that uploads your walking data to website so you can view charts.

FINIS Lap Track – waterproof lap tracker for swimmers that counts laps, calories burned, and time.

Brain Wave EEG Development Platforms

Emotiv EPOC

NeuroSky

OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator – commercial EEG sensor sold as an extra peripheral for gaming systems. Hacked here.

OpenEEG project – open source designs for both active and passive EEG sensors.

Resources

NYU ITP – Computers for the Rest of You – course taught by DanO focused on tracking daily behavior using physical computing

PersonalInformatics.org – collection of informatics websites and tools

The Quantified Self - links to tools for “knowing your own mind and body”

Based on the brainstorm begun here, and further informed by the copy and paste of a face exhibited here, here’s a proposal for a Mind Borrowing Machine.  There are mind donors and mind consumers.  The mind donors are extraordinary people, like Buddhist monks, Rock musicians, athletes, celebrities, and other inspirational folks who are willing to share their unique minds to their devoted and mindful fans.

Ozzie could be a mind donor

The mind donors would don an EEG cap or other brain scanning device that would record their brain patterns while doing what they do best.  For example, Ozzie would be recorded while on stage at the climax of his peculiar type of ecstatic madness, and Meb Keflezighi would be recorded while running a marathon.  However, a Buddhist monk would be brain scanned while in meditation, since only monks can truly be at peace, and meditation is their particular field of mind expertise.

A mind donor monk

These mind patterns would be recorded into digital format and made available via download, pay-per-view, or as a consumer good to be purchased over-the-counter at the local bodega and traded with friends.

A mind download

Mind consumers would purchase their own consumer-level brain-scanning cap with a slot where they can plug in someone else’s mind cassette.  The consumer would  plug in a cassette with Ozzie’s or the Buddhist monk’s mind map, and they would enter into a sort of biofeedback loop with the selected mind donor.

A consumer plugged into the Buddhist monk's mind

Through the data emitted by their own brains and that of the selected mind donor, consumers train their own minds to mirror the brain patterns of Ozzie or the monk, or whichever other mind donor they choose as a reference.  Over time, consumers will learn to quickly synchronize their own brain patterns to the brain patterns of their favorite donors.

Mind feedback software

Eventually, consumers can have a library of minds to choose from.  A mind for every mood.

A collectible mind library

Following the natural evolution and democratization of technology, once the Mind Borrowing Machine proves itself technologically, there’s no reason why everyone couldn’t eventually be able to become both mind donor and mind consumer.  After all, everyone is special.