Cerebral Hack

Since my adoption of hobbies concerning brain function, I have sought communities, joined communities, and observed communities. Most communities specialized towards a particular technology or methodology, all equally friendly and respectful amongst themselves. It’s a bit refreshing to see a [technology/methodology] movement be so open, so ready to help and/or give. If you haven’t poked your head around into different necks of the woods, have a look at the Links bellow. For reference, these can always be found in the CH Library

NeuroSky Developer Forum – - more info

Emotiv Developer Forums Thanks for the heads up from BCIForums

Facebook – Emotivated Facebook group – more info

Brainwaves Entrainment Forums – - more info

Openeeg Main mailing list – Discussion of EEG hardware, software, training protocols, NFB theory – for developers and users. – more info

Facebook Group – Emotiv EPOC fan page – more info

OCZ Support – OCZ Support & Community Forum – OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator – more info

OCZ (NIA) – Facebook Grp: OCZ (NIA) Neural Impulse Actuator Users – more info

Openeeg Software – Mailserv for the OpenEEG project – more info

Brainwaves Entrainment Forums – - more info

Looks like we will be seeing EPOCs in the wild sooner than later. Updates from the company’s Facebook say they are in fact in production (for SDK developers read:customers) and units have shipped as long as a week ago.

Bellow is the link to a gallery of a bunch of production stage pics and shots of the factory.

Click here

Again I cant thank enough my bud @EdRabbit and his friend @VioletBlue who are in the San Francisco area for giving me a hand at Interviewing and Demoing at Neurosky HQ Located in San Jose, CA. with me being in Chicago (and in this economy) they opted to do the foot work for me, much thanks, you two did a great job!

HOW DOES THE MINDSET WORK?

“A couple of keys for us,” Jim Sullivan, VP Worldwide Sales begins to explain “in that in some of the products we see today you can tell they took traditional medical technology and repurposed it. They cleaned it up and pulled away the pieces you don’t need. We took the opposite approach. We started with the individual – and that presented some challenges – and created the product from the ground up with them in mind. The brain is a wonderful computer, but it’s an analog computer. People in the digital age are used to digital responses. A digital response is immediate and definite, it’s either a 1 or a 0, its on or off. Analog is not that way at all. Our chip converts the signals from analog to digital”.

“Now [the Mindset] can remove the measurement of muscle movement, it’s listening to brainwaves, the faintest signal in the human body. Your heartbeat can be picked up very easily, it’s a very strong electrical signal. Brainwaves are measured in microvolt’s. Anytime you’re listening to brainwaves, because they are so faint, you have to listen really, really hard. So for us it was a challenge to get rid of the muscle noise and just focus on brainwaves. When you look at something like the NIA that uses muscles for control, most of that noise you see in the brainwave, we worked hard to filter out. So it’s simply a different approach. We take that [muscle noise] out of the equation”

“The two algorithms we ship in this chip are Attention and Mediation, that’s what we call them. You can call them any number of things. Attention; by the way in Neuroscience, has 42 very different definitions, and meditation also has a very large amount. Attention in our case is really a single minded focus, blocking everything but one thing out in your mind. So you can drive the attention meter on our Brainwave Visualizer application  very high by staring at something and concentrating on moving the dial. Meditation is not the opposite of attention, it’s like a venn diagram; you can be very attentive, and very serene at the same time. The MindSet does also provide the raw EEG wave – but that is primarily used more by researchers than developers at the moment.”

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Firstly I want to thank my bud @EdRabbit and his friend @VioletBlue who are in the San Francisco area for giving me a hand at Interviewing and Demoing at OCZ HQ.  Located in San Jose, CA. with me being in Chicago (and in this economy) they opted to do the foot work for me, much thanks, you two did a stellar job!  I hope you two had a lot of fun :)

For more information on the OCZ NIA you can read ther review we did for the device HERE. For some custom mods that have been done by its development community and can find the links to various Applications HERE. And you can join in the discutions within its community HERE

Listening to the audio interview, and then myself having a talk with Dr. Michael Schuette on the phone, Ive come to gain a lot of respect for OCZ and where they have gone with the NIA, their philosophies on BCI and business within its market in general.  For those that don’t know, OCZ is a manufacturer of High Performance RAM for anything from “1337 gaming rigs” to professional engineering machines that run ProE and SolidWorks at the same time.  A lot of people down talk it because it doesn’t do what they expect it to.  When in fact it does more than what they let on, and have plans in the future to do even more.  Dr. Schuette even says:
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Sometimes we all have to take a step back and take notice to the advancements in technology; and the aspects in place, as to why we are as far as we are when it comes to the technology we have grown accustomed to. Without medical advancements in Neurology and our now very (yet still limited) extensive knowledge of the brain, this site and others like it would not exist.

This is the story of Jennifer Bechard of Michigan about her fight against Hydrocephalus and what YOU can do to help.  She has agreed to share her tale  for CerebralHack.com in hopes that more people will take notice of this illness that affects so many and educate those that may not be familiar with Hydrocephalus.

What is Hydrocephalus? How does it feel to have a headache all day, everyday? Never experiencing a moment without any form of relief? Although hydrocephalus is not the typical household word, it is not uncommon. Hydrocephalus, commonly referred to as “water on the brain”, is a lifelong chronic neurological condition, characterized by an increased volume of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) within the spaces inside the brain. Hydrocephalus affects over one million Americans from newborns to seniors and presently, there is no cure…. (continue reading…)

• Neurosky’s BCI MindSet Released yesterday! $199 http://tr.im/n7YS #BCI #brain
• The Emotiv SDK including an EPOC SDK headset now available $500 http://tr.im/neYW
• RT @allblue1914 Get ready 2 take U computer interaction 2a new level W/ Emotiv’s Epoc http://emotiv.com/INDS_2/inds_2_3.html <– Great Demo
• Cerebral Hack Updates! Emotiv gets Green Light! http://tr.im/nrfb Neurosky’s MindSet Released! http://tr.im/nrfi RT
• URL Fixed! Cerebral Hack Updates! Emotiv gets Green Light! http://tr.im/nrmb Neurosky’s MindSet Released! http://tr.im/nrfi RT
• OCZ NIA IP owners Brainfingers have announced their Beta SDK and New training Software for the NIA http://tr.im/nyey Some Great Updates here
• Cerebral Hack Reviews: OCZ NIA Training Software 3.0 http://tr.im/nyWl
• RT @thinkberg BBCI Demo: Real-time control of a an “Adams Family” pinball machine via BCI. Foto coverage at http://twurl.nl/ro3wyy
• Electrocorticography Reads The Brain’s Surface http://tr.im/nG3I
• DIY Brain Hacking via….ping-pong balls? http://tr.im/nG4j
• Just added myself to the http://wefollow.com twitter directory under: #BCI #hacking #consciousness

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