Solo l’altroieri ho scoperto l’esistenza dell’OCZ NIA, un dispositivo per rilevare impulsi neurali ed azionare la pressione di tasti sul PC. Qualche sviluppatore si è già messo al lavoro per usare lo stesso dispositivo al fine di rilevare il sonno R.E.M.: di questo si occupa il progetto TweetDreams. Vi riporto le delucidazioni che l’autore mi fornisce in e-mail:

Hello, Mr. Scaffardi. In regard to your question–yes I can give you a few pointers. Luzide was created to detect rapid eye movement. This IS the key to triggering a message to a program that the biosignals are byproducts of dreaming. Basically, I wrote a small vb program that uses the OCZ keyboard input profiles. I just adjusted a profile that reads specific left and right looks from the eyes at the best sensitivity I could get, and then created keystrokes that my program would basically listen for and log. After it starts receiving keystrokes, it counts up about 50 or so left and right detected eye movments and THIS is the trigger for my program that the sleeper is dreaming. The program starts a binaural beats sound for the length of about 30 minutes to entrain the brain to work around a specific frequency. This is experimental even after years of research, and it is situational dependent. It works on occasion, and can cause problems for others that are light sleepers. I have now concluded that the best way to trigger lucidity is using hynosis. During entering sleep, a sound recording tells you “when you hear this sound, ” followed by a beep, “you will realize you are dreaming and become aware of your dream.” This is the best way I have determined.

I have never opened up my NIA, however I do know that there are schematics and photo’s of the internal components of the circuit board. This is basically of no use to me though since I am not really skilled in electronics, rather just creative thinking and outside the box type of ideas. You might consider the NIA but remember that it is plagued by grounding issues. I never got anywhere near accurate results with a device that had no grounding (i.e., laptops or portable computing devices) so I could never actually depend on it working at all. OCZ actually remarketed the NIA from Brainfingers, a device that was created for the handicapped to interact with software applications and small simple games. This adaptation to hardcore video games as the marketing push is terrible as it’s not practical at all. It is the only way they could sell the units though, making it look like a breakthrough gaming periphrial. Upon opening the box, you’ll notice that it’s nothing more than a crude piece of scientific measuring equipment. EEG readings are unpredictable, and damn near impossible to control. Some people swear they have been able to control their alpha waves, but I think that it’s just coincidence. Make sure that when you use it, test the baseline (the cleanest signal) by touching it to your skin. You’ll notice how sensitive it is. You can’t even move you eyes or clench your jaw because it also detects bioelectrical signals from muscles. I am still waiting for an SDK, so that I can directly read the brainwaves selectively.

Un altro temerario sta implementando un software simile:

NIA REM-Dreamer

mentre altri utenti stanno procedendo al reverse engineering del dispositivo:

http://www.genmay.com/frontpage/index.php?p=vB798717

A giorni potrò avere l’aggeggio sottomano e vedrò di postare subito un approfondito hands-on.

Qualora siate interessati ad altri dispositivi di questo genere, potete trovare qui una comparazione su wikipedia.