Painting With Your Thoughts

Researchers in Austria, looking to eventually give brain implants to paralyzed people, have completed a significant step forward – a machine that lets you paint using only your mind. Well…sort of.

Right now it looks not unlike Napoleon Dynamite’s time machine, and involves putting on a wired-up bathing cap to select icons on a screen by looking at them and thinking about them. Choosing shapes and colors thusly, you create your virtual “painting.” Happy trees and happy clouds all around!

And this may be a blessing in disguise, because if it drew thoughts directly, imagine what would happen if Dr. Abraxas got hold of one. Or, really, any of us watching a trailer for the next Kevin James movie, imagining what we’d like to do to the people who greenlit it.

There’s video of this thing in action that doesn’t necessarily rule out the idea of it being an eyeline driven device rather than the mind-reader that’s promised. I’d embed it but the code makes this site have a brainfart of its own.