On the brain

The brain has been on the brain of researchers of late. Researchers unveiled a detailed brain simulation called Blue Brain at the European Future Technologies meeting in Prague. But researchers are doing more than simply creating ever more exacting models of the brain. They are getting it to send tweets. Wearing a cap fitted with electrodes, Adam Wilson, a graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison was able to Twitter without anything more than brain impulses. Another use for brainwave projection is being consider: military robot wrangling. A brainwave headset that allows a person to push a ping-pong ball through concentration may have other applications. Apparently pushing that ping-pong ball only requires concentration. What one concentrates on is quite immaterial. That's where a new project by the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate comes in. "Brain music" is the new performance enhancing drug. Firefighters will be given the "instrumental alert track" that will provide focus and energy or reduce stress. Given all the attention the brain is getting, maybe science is simply fattening us up for the inevitable zombie invasion.