Following a traumatic incident, the brain can be hardwired to remind you of it. ![]() If someone has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) they can have intrusive thoughts about the event that caused it – which could be observing or being in an accident or natural disaster, being mugged or raped, or going through a significant life event such as a divorce. Milder forms of intrusive thoughts come in the form of our own critical voice: the one in our heads that tells us things like ‘You’ll never get that job, you’re not good enough’, ‘You’re going to look stupid if you do that’, or ‘They don’t like you and they’re talking about you behind your back’. Equally common are blasphemous thoughts or inappropriate thoughts about sex. New mothers often think about their baby coming to harm. These types of thoughts often come in the form of images where a person might imagine driving their car through a crowd of people, harming or killing another person or imagining a loved one fatally injured or dead. One of the most common types of intrusive thought relates to concerns about safety or risk. The unwelcome thoughts we have can be in the form of images, sounds, or statements. While harmless in themselves, they can have a negative effect on our quality of life, and sometimes affect the way we behave. People who have symptoms of anxiety or depression are most likely to have intrusive thoughts, but they can happen to anyone. They’re often repetitive – with the same kind of thought cropping up again and again – and they can be disturbing or even distressing. As the technology improves, she predicted it would enable applications such as lights that automatically get brighter when someone is focused on reading the paper or turns on happy or soothing music depending on a person's mood.Ī decade down the road, she said, "thought controlled technology is how we're going to be interacting with all aspects of our environment on a daily basis.Intrusive thoughts are unwanted thoughts that can pop into our heads without warning, at any time. Garten said the game is just one delivery system for the technology and her company has already created thought controlled blenders and toasters. But while developing that technology, the team realized its potential for brain training. Interaxon was originally focused mainly on controlling devices such as lights with your mind. It works with a brain-reading sensor headset developed by San Jose, Calif.-based NeuroSky. Interaxon's technology was originally developed in the laboratory of University of Toronto computer engineering professor Steve Mann, who is Garten's former mentor. "Does that mean I can see you paying attention better at school? Does that mean that those changes, if they do happen will last? Have you fundamentally found a way of changing the nature of the way the circuits of the brain function?" "It's a very innovative strategy in terms of making it like a video game," Jain said.īut questions remain about how effective the brain training might actually be, he said. ![]() Umesh Jain, a child psychiatrist at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the Hospital for Sick Children, who is trying to get a grant to test whether Interaxon's games could help kids with ADD. The regular controller only works optimally when the player maintains a "desired brain state." Fort Washington, Pa.-based SmartBrain Technology uses brain wave measurement technology with regular Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox video games.Emotiv Systems Inc., which sells a $300 headset that works with both specially-designed games in the company's app store or as an alternate controller for PC games.NeuroSky, which makes the headsets used by Interaxon. It has an app store featuring games, mental exercises and utilities.Other companies have already have thought-controlled games systems on the market, including:
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