Tattoos That Let You Control Objects with Your Mind!!

Science hasn’t been easy on the paranormal, routinely deflating fantastic claims by hucksters purporting psychic abilities. So wouldn’t it be ironic if scientists were on the verge of making paranormal-like abilities a reality?

Imagine controlling an object with your mind. Or don’t, because you probably already have. I did when I was a (pretty little) kid. It never worked, of course, but boy did I stare daggers at several unsuspecting flower pots, pencils and sticks of chalk.

The trouble, of course, is that your brain works a whole lot better when it’s motivating things it’s actually wired to, say your eyeballs, tongue, fingers or toes. But aha, you’re saying, we have wireless technology in 2013. We live in the future! Can’t we just cut that cord, too?

We already have: If you want to get technical about it, when using a handheld remote control with old-school antennae to pilot a hobby-style airplane across a field, you don’t actually touch the radio-controlled plane; the brain-interface includes your hands and the control box. But that assumes you have hands to work with, and working a control box to drive a wireless drone around is hardly “telekinetic” — not half as cool-sounding as it might be if you could simply think that drone into action.

You’ve probably heard of brain implants acting as biomedical prostheses in what’s sometimes referred to as a “brain-computer interface,” allowing someone to manipulate neuroprosthetic arms and legs or simply nudge a mouse cursor using nothing but thought. We’re doing that stuff today. But you’re still talking about interfaces that usually involve invasive technology, often drilled into the skull and attached directly to the brain itself — Jean Grey, it’s not. What if you could reduce the interface to something that didn’t require brain surgery, something not only noninvasive, but roughly the size of a tiny, removable tattoo?

Call it “cerebral cord-cutting.” That’s essentially what Dr. Todd Coleman and fellow researchers at the University of California San Diego are up to, creating “electronic tattoos” capable of interfacing with your brain and wirelessly conveying your thoughts as commands to remote systems and devices. Using what he describes as an “ultrathin conformal” design, Coleman has been developing “foldable, stretchable electrode arrays” that can non-invasively pick up neural signals, EEG-style. Unlike a traditional EEG, which might involve a spaghetti-dinner’s worth of scalp-placed cabling and conductive gel, Coleman’s solution amounts to a tiny piece of pliable skin-like material less than the thickness of a human hair and houses “epidermal electronic” circuitry powered by solar cells or antennae, which also allow it to communicate wirelessly. That’s it up top, a stylin’ body mark that wouldn’t be out of place in a Neal Stephenson or William Gibson novel.

found @ http://techland.time.com/2013/02/22/finally-tattoos-that-let-you-control-objects-with-your-mind/