preview

How Does Mindflex Affect The Mind?

Decent Essays
Open Document

In 2009, the well-known toy company, Mattel, released an advanced version of our primitive board games: Mindflex. Essentially the board game utilized the brain waves of the player in order to control the intensity of a small fan, in order to move a floating ball through an obstacle course. Despite the skepticism of many users and observers (including myself), Mindflex actually used the mind through a primitive version of a piece of medical technology known as an electroencephalograph (EEG). Four years later, scientists from the University of Washington contorted the idea of a brain-computer interfacing (BCI), such as Mindflex, into more vacillating technology: BBI, otherwise known as, brain-to-brain interfacing. Essentially replacing the computer …show more content…

In 2011, Dr. Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University successfully created “Brainet architectures consisting of two or three monkey brains” (Computing Arm Movements 3). Later on, Dr. Nicolelis synchronized four rat brains together “essentiality turning these rats into processors” (A Researcher Made 6). In these two experiments, EEG technology allowed for the animals brains to work in synchronization with one another, bypassing an need for auditory or visual sensory communication. These, so called, “Brainets [of individuals] consistently performed at the same or higher levels than single rats,” allowing them to perform more advanced tasks that would be unsurmountable with only a single mind in use (qtd. in A Researcher Made 7). Basically, these researchers have created the first organic computer that, as of now, can perform "useful computational problems, such as discrete classification, image processing, storage and retrieval of tactile information, and even weather forecasting” (qtd. in A Researcher Made 7). Fundamentally speaking, it’s as if science has replaced bytes and chips of a computer with the minds of living organisms. The bizarre applications of brain-to-brain interfacing does not draw a line between species either. In 2013, the professor of radiology at Harvard University, Dr. Seung-Schik Yoo, “developed the first interspecies ‘brain-to-brain …show more content…

Of course, as far as we known, these technologies are not advanced enough for practical use, but is is the notion that something as bizarre and as devious as mind control is a potential reality. Our modern-day society is worried about the threats to our cyber-security, but now our concerns are evolving to threats of our neuro-security. An even more frightening fact is that there is no such thing as a BBI machine, because the technology to create a brain-to-brain connection has been around since 1875; we just didn’t know how to use it. All that was needed to create a brain-to-brain interface in the experiments done by the University of Washington were an electroencephalograph (EEG) and a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) coil, two pieces of machinery that can be found in most an hospital (Ma 2). In fact, the threats to neuro-security may not be as far in the future as previously assumed. The need for cumbersome, impractical hospital equipment in order to achieve brain-to-brain communication, according to Dr. Dae-Hyeong Kim, who has been doing research into “discrete epidermal electronics” involving BBI (1). It has already been confirmed through the University of Washington that BBI can be held over the internet, and through the use of “extremely thin grids of electrical sensors applied directly to the outside of the

Get Access
Related
Get Access