Use the Force! | Explorer

Innovator Ton Lee is changing the way we study the brain.

So that will feel a little wet on your head because this is the nature of this system. Lee's revolutionary headset records our brain waves and translates them into meaningful data that's easy to understand. And now we can start to see your brain.

"Is this really what's going on in my brain?"

"Right, your brain in real time. Wow, this might be pretty cool after all, in a Jedi kind of way."

The headset is actually an EEG that sends information about my brain wirelessly to a computer or smartphone. An EEG, or Electroencephalogram, measures the brain waves that are produced by electrical pulses when neurons communicate with each other.

The electrical frequencies of the brain waves correlate to different states of mind, such as concentration and relaxation, giving scientists valuable insight into how our brains function.

"Wow, just lit things up there for a second. I must have had an idea."

"That's right. Whereas the others just look like a bunch of zigzaggy lines, here I can imagine what's happening there in the front and that in the back. We are able to see the dynamics of how the brain is changing and which part is interacting and how it's then, um, exchanging information to a different region of the brain and how those, um, regions synchronize and desynchronize."

"That's crazy."

"Have you ever moved anything with your mind?"

"Tries to do that before, maybe when I was young and I thought I could."

"So in this case you're trying to imagine the flower opening up. In addition to looking inside our brains, the Epoch headset can also read our minds. What kind of first? The headset learns the pattern of my brain waves as I think about the flower opening. Once we accept this, the flower is live, and you can try and recreate that thought in your mind to try and open the flower up again."

"Oh, I had it there for a second."

"You have it there for a second. Use the force, Luke."

"That's right, almost. You got it."

"I can [Music] see."

"Well done! This is amazing. Thank you."