Subject, verb, object

On Thursday morning I had a new and funny experience: usually I'm a researcher. That day, I was a subject.

My engineer friend Steve sent me a recruiting ad for a brain-computer interface study - i.e. getting people to control computers using their brains. Yes, it sounds silly at first if you don't read the techy sections in the newspapers on a regular basis (actually, if you do read the techy section, you're probably the kind of person who reads news online anyway), but there's actually quite a lot of work being done on that - the most obvious application being for disabled people to use computers more easily. Even totally paralyzed people could in theory communicate via a BCI (here's a cool example of an alternative text input program that's much faster than trying to type on an on-screen keyboard).

I registered partly for the $10 per hour (cash being more of a need than the mere financial gain, since I earn more than that at my job, but am perpetually running out of duit syiling) and partly for the cool factor - after reading books like Neuromancer and being a big Seven of Nine fan in one's teens, how could anyone like me not want to have a go?

Being the night owl that I am, getting up at 6:30 in order to have breakfast (most important meal of the day, mah) and get to the appointment at 8 was the worst part. EF, the scientist, turned out to be a petite, square-faced young woman with curls pulled back in a ponytail and lips bigger than mine (which is quite an accomplishment). The first thing was filling out consent forms et cetera and having EF explain how the tasks would work.

First, she said, she would put an electrode cap on my head. This looked rather like a swimming cap but perforated with white plastic rings all over - these were the electrodes. Next she took a fearsomely large syringe - the tip of the needle was completely blunt, she reassured me - and squirted some gel into each hole, scratching my scalp lightly with the tip to make better contact. The last things were a ground electrode clipped onto my left ear and a heart rate monitor strapped to my wrist. With that rainbow of wires running from me I felt like Frankenstein's monster.

Or maybe just someone with a very strange hat.

Since I've never had an EEG (electroencephalogram) before, it was strange to see the jagged graph of 19 different traces on the big flatscreen monitor. EF asked me to blink, to move my hands, and to clench my jaw, and we could see how the traces responded as I did so. It was important to relax while trying to perform the tasks, so as to not confuse the computer's reading my mind.

The screen went black with a giant green 'T' in the center. EF explained that the first task would be to watch for a red square to appear randomly on either the left or right side of the screen. Easy enough. The next task, however, was to keep still completely and just imagine clenching my hands in response to the squares. For purposes of imagination, I decided, it would be best to recall the most intense sensations of hand-clenching - the draw of the muscle running along the medial (inner) side of my forearm and the pressure in my knuckles. My breath stopped with the tension and then there was the added confusion of trying to relax and breathe normally. The two minutes felt as if they'd been stretched out to five.

So, once more unto the breach, dear friends...

The next two were similar - a square would appear at the top or bottom of the screen instead, and I was to clench my hands or tap my feet correspondingly, then repeat in imagination. Whee.

The fifth task actually sounded fun. In response to the red square at the top of the screen, instead of making a movement, I was to imagine hearing a song. "Pretend you're listening to it, not singing it, because that uses a different part of the brain, and imaginary lip movements could mess up the EEG," EF told me. I picked the Twelve Girls' Band cover of Coldplay's Clocks - it's a lovely instrumental song because it brings out the tick-tock rhythm of a mechanical clock well, which for me tends to be rather hypnotic and get stuck in my head. The problem with that, of course, was that it was hard to stop thinking about when the red square wasn't on.

After doing that twice, we finally moved on to the fun part where I would get to control the computer with my brain...or so I thought. "There'll be two big red squares, either on the left or the right, and a red circle in the middle, which is your cursor," said EF. "Try to get the ball into the square and hold it there for half a second."

My first try was gratifying - the ball zoomed to the right, dived into the square, which flashed yellow - barely. It wavered from side to side with an irregular bouncy motion. After a few more seconds, the square vanished and another appeared on the left. The ball dived to the right. ARGH. After a few more goes, it seemed that I could reliably make the cursor move to the right, but hardly ever to the left. "Think about motions on the side that you want it to go to," EF suggested. I tried to imagine clenching my left hand, or tapping my left foot, but after some time was reduced to furiously thinking, "LEFT LEFT LEFT, CELAKA!"

EF took off the cap and the clips, paid out the ten bucks, and gave me tissue paper to wipe the gel from my hair. As I exited, I looked again at the poster I'd noticed when coming in that said, "...volunteers can also experience some of the frustrations disabled people face." Amen, and may it teach me greater respect.