Short snip of long article:

Brain Hacking?

To get a better idea of the technology behind “brainwave-reading” devices, like the toy manufacturers use today, we sat down with Dr. Adriane Randolph, a professor at Kennesaw State University, and the founder and Director of the University’s BrainLab. At BrainLab, Randolph has been exploring the cutting edge of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and how they can be used to assist people who are home-bound, such as people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Dr. Randoph’s BrainLab recently developed a BCI for Google Glass that allows users to trigger swipe and select events through thought alone.

In this 2011 TEDx talk, Randolph describes the human brain as the “ultimate remote control”.

Randolph explained that there’s already an existing effort called “neuro-marketing” being explored by businesses who want to get a better sense of consumer response to products by using neurological indicators, rather than what the consumer actually says about the product.

It’s basically using neuro-physiological tools to get inside of the mind of the consumer. Traditionally, we’ll put you in a focus group and ask you a bunch of questions, but there are so many biases that can come into that, where your conscious brain takes over and colors your responses. However, we can get to your gut reaction through monitoring your brainwaves, monitoring your eyes to see where you’re looking, watching your pulse, and all of these other ways that our bodies give us away.

Dr. Randolph explained that the research-grade technology utilizes a “bathing-cap” looking apparatus covered with electrodes that touch the scalp, all fed back to a “bio-amplifier” via a serial cable.

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The bio-amplifier is what provides researchers with a clearer version of the very low-amplitude brain signals picked up from the scalp. Dr. Randolph described how researchers can identify specific actions or behaviors by looking at which frequency of brainwave is changing at any given time.

For example the signal that’s related to movement, the Mu [wave], is around eight to thirteen hertz.

According to Randolph, one of the most significant problems with sensing such low-amplitude signals from the scalp, is that the sensors are so sensitive, they’ll also pick up electrical activity in the room at other frequencies, such as the 60 hertz signal coming from your computer monitor, or the electrical outlets in the room. That signal needs to be filtered out by the hardware and software doing the brainwave analysis.

Some people go as far as building what are called Faraday Cages […], but we’re working on real-world applications, and most of us don’t go around wearing a copper cage…

Do Brainwaves Provide Useful Information?

The bigger question of course, is whether or not it’s possible for anyone out there — be it a futuristic brainwave-hacker, or some government agency looking to use brainwave hacking as a new form of surveillance — to actually extract useful data about a person’s intentions or thoughts, by sensing a person’s brainwaves?

Many people before us, much smarter than I, have already mapped out the areas of the brain associated with things like movement, visual attention, judgement and similar things – but that’s the first layer. The second layer comes from people who for years have been doing signal processing, filtering and different algorithms. [….] If you know where to look, you don’t necessarily have to create one of those things [algorithms] yourself.

However, Dr. Randolph also explained that it isn’t as simple as extracting that information out of someone’s entire brainwave profile.