I tend not to write gushy posts about the latest tech toys because I don’t care for devices looking sleek or fashionable. To me, function matters a lot more than form. However, I’m writing about this latest interface device from OCZ because it’s cool enough to make for an exception. It’s called the Neural Impulse Actuator and it’s a headband that can “hear” your thoughts and allow you to use it to interface with a computer, replacing the traditional mouse and keyboard.

Devices like this aren’t exactly news at this point, but this is the first time that I’ve heard of something like this outside of an experimental setting with specially designed software. OCZ’s device has already been demoed at a computer show to play a commercial FPS game, Unreal Tournament, and apparently will soon be in normal production with an estimated retail price of US$300.00. The makers also claim that since the device bypasses the muscles, response time for gamers will be much better. Essentially, instead of your thoughts going to your fingers and from there to the computer, they’ll pretty much go directly from your brain to the computer.

We’ll have to wait a while yet to see how much of this is true and how sophisticated an input device it proves to be. It seems to me that an important factor will be the communications bandwidth that it allows between your brain and the computer. If the bandwidth is large enough, it would cause a revolution in games design since it would allow games with many more options and controls to be designed than would normally be possible given the physical control limits of traditional interfaces.