Headset with built-in EEG can Authenticate you by your Thoughts – ‘Passthoughts’

We often forget passwords! Just think of the situation if the forget password service is not present! OMG!

Much is discussed about the traditional password and now other alternatives are looked upon like the One Ring from Google. Although many type of biometric sensors have come up, researchers from UC Berkeley are taking it to the next level by using brain waves to identify you.

A headset with a built-in electroencephalogram (EEG),  will authenticate the users with “passthoughts”.  The team has used the Neurosky Mindset, ($199 dollar headset) with bluetooth headphones and a single EEG probe attached to it.  By selecting customized tasks and each user’s authentication thresholds, the team was able to reduce error rates to below 1%, with a single sensor; The waves were good enough to effectively authenticate users.

The researchers say,“We find that brainwave signals, even those collected using low-cost non-intrusive EEG sensors in everyday settings, can be used to authenticate users with high degrees of accuracy.”

The researchers tested with seven different mental tasks where users were asked to do two types of tasks: three where everyone performed the same task and four where users had individual secrets.  All seven tasks seemed to provide information enough to successfully authenticate the users. The important thing is finding the right task that is done on a daily basis by an individual and at the same time not boring.

This whole concept may be like a fantasy, but these experimental results do remind us that the future is going to be more realistic than we might have suspected.

We have to wait for a while to watch all this in action!