A Load Off Your Mind

Engineering professors are devising a brain scanner that will sense when you’re going into information overload

Picture an air-traffic controller tracking 10 planes approaching an airport. Now imagine he’s having trouble focusing on all 10 aircraft, perhaps because he’s been up all night or just has a lot on his mind. What would happen if his computer sensed his mental fatigue, removed one plane from his oversight and reassigned it to a controller who just started her shift?

The scenario might seem like science fiction, but with new technology being developed by Tufts researchers Robert Jacob and Sergio Fantini, it could be quite real someday. Jacob and Fantini have developed a brain-scanning device that allows a computer to sense the level of mental exertion of its user and adjust tasks accordingly to achieve the correct balance between boredom and overload.

“Humans and computers are two powerful information processors connected by this miserably narrow bandwidth—a mouse and a keyboard,” says Jacob, a professor of computer science in the School of Engineering. Jacob’s challenge is to find ways to create a more direct connection between machine and human brain to make both more efficient.

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