Real-Life Jedi

You don't have to be a Jedi to make things move with your mind.

The new technology sits on your'e head which detects specific brain signals.

The headset, which was developed by Australian company Emotiv for the games industry, has been around for some time. But it is only now that companies such as IBM are beginning to harness the wealth of data that it can provide.

Many commercial mind control technologies are designed to restore physical ability to those who have lost it.

To test this technology the testy sits infront of a computer, which displays a floating cube, when the testy thinks about moving the cube, it processes the minds thoughts and actually moves the way that the testy thinks. 

"Admittedly, the system needed a fair bit of pre-training to achieve the single task. But it has, nonetheless, learned to associate a specific thought pattern with a particular movement".

Control signals come from two main sources; electroencephalography (EEG) measurements of brain activity, and readings of nerve impulses as they travel outwards to the muscles.