U of A students create video game that uses your brain as a controller

In the quest for an international prize, a team of University of Alberta students came together tocreatea video game.

But it's not like the average video game.

Their simple shooter computer game, called AlphaBlaster, uses your brain as acontroller.

The undergraduate students formed the club NeurAlbertaTechlast year to compete in NeuroTechX, an internationalcompetition that encourages students to collaborate on neurotechnology projects.

Psychology student Nicole Wlasitz, one of the students on the team, said the technology which uses brain waves and brain patterns for various uses is a growing industry.

"Neurotech is kind of a field that's blowing up right now," Wlasitz said in an interview aired on CBC Edmonton's Radio Active on Wednesday. "So that's exciting for us as students because we're learning about it in our classrooms."

Abdel Tayem,fourth-year psychology student andpresident of the club, said the lure of creating the gamewas the ability to take information from the brain and use it to do somethingon a computer.

"This is an experience that you normally wouldn't be able to get anywhere else, especially outside of campus," Tayem said.

2D shooter game

The 2D shooter game gives the player a limited number of bullets, as an unlimited number of demons crawl across the screen towards thecharacter.

Shooting is done by usinga brain-sensing headset, called an EEG headband. It sitson the player's forehead and the back of theears, pickingup the electrical activity from thebrain.

The headbandsare used commercially for meditation and stress management, and were provided by NeuroTechX.

Wlasitz said the possibilities of neurotechnologyarewide, includingto help people with limited mobility, such as robotic arms controlled using brain input.

"And then it's also simpler things like our project, where you're using input from the brain or just from the nervous system and you're interfacing that somehow with technology," she said.

"It's really exciting for people who do have limited mobility or aren't able to interact with the computer in the normal keyboard and mouse kind of input way ... so the doors that this opens for gaming for them is really huge."

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The team created the video game in just two months as an entry into the international neurotechnology contest.

They placed fifth out of ten teams. Other teams were fromMcGill University, University of Toronto, cole de Technologie Suprieure in Montreal, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

The team has made the code for AlphaBlaster available online.