If you dig a little on the Internet, it’s not too difficult to find prototype devices or interfaces that use your brain as a controller. There are videos left and right from companies and researchers trying to perfect and to capitalize on this novel method of control. The issue is that few companies have actually released any commercial brain control products — or if they have, those products haven’t been for the average consumer. This month Mattel broke that mold with a simple, fun, and relatively affordable game called Mind Flex.

The premise of Mind Flex is to raise or lower a floating ball by concentrating or relaxing respectively. The Mind Flex kit contains an assortment of games, but typically it is a circular obstacle course through which you have navigate a small ball.  Unfortunately you don’t move ball left or right with your mind — only up and down. There is a dial that controls the position of a fan that blows a column of air, and it is this air column actually lifts and suspends the ball in flight. You control the fan speed – and thus the height of the ball — with your concentration. To progress horizontally through the course you must turn the dial at the base of the game that advances ball.

Of course there is a catch: you can’t just stare really hard at the ball and expect it to move. Instead you have to put on a headband and some ear clips.  The headset sensors and ear lob clips measure theta-wave activity in your brain. Theta waves correlate directly to your level of concentration, so the more theta wave activity, the higher the ball will rise. In the end, the brain control aspect of the game is limited, but given that the technology is still relatively young, it is nice to see it in practice.

The technology in Mind Flex comes to us courtesy of NeuroSky, a developer of brain-computer interface technologies. Developers with an interest in this kind of thing will be happy to know that NeuroSky offers development kits so that you can create your own mind-bending products.

Controlling things with our minds has always been the ultimate goal of homo sapiens — at least since the Jedi figured it out. Mind Flex may be just a fun game — but it is also a sign of things to come. Brain Control technology has progressed a long way in a relatively short time, recently finding applications in many fields including assistance for the disabled. Even so, we still have quite a lot of ground to cover before reliable brain control systems become practical.