Forget Keyboards, Play Doom Using Your Brain

In what could be a sign of how we will play games in the future, a study presented to a conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has shown it's possible to play games using just your thoughts and brainwaves. The researchers even hooked-up a man's brain to the classic FPS Doom to show this mind-reading technology in action. Supposedly all you need to do is think "kill imp", and there you go: you're playing Doom.

Well... it's not exactly that simple. Wadsworth Center research scientist Gerwin Schalk presented a video to the conference, showing a man playing Doom using a joystick to move his character, but actually using his mind to fire his weapon. Schalk explained that the man, who suffers from epilepsy, had electrodes implanted directly on the surface of his brain, and these were used to interpret his thought commands.


You can watch the entire presentation below, but be warned, it's like attending a university lecture. Skip through to the 10-minute mark to see the Doom brain-machine in action:

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The researchers have also used the technology to play the old-school shoot 'em up Galaga. Test subjects successfully managed to move their spaceships left and right using nothing but their thought patterns.