A brain-computer interface (BCI) is a direct connection between the human brain and a computer. It records central nervous system activity and interprets it to assess brain states or decode commands. This talk will explore methods for detecting and interpreting brain activity, highlight notable research achievements, and review the emerging BCI market, including devices and algorithms developed at Microsoft Research. The topic connects to image processing in several ways: brain signals are often represented as spatial grids that can be analyzed with image-processing techniques; neuroscience offers insights into human vision that can inspire new computational methods; human and computer vision can complement each other in symbiotic systems; and computer vision and neuroscience are likely to converge in future high-definition sensory prosthetics for augmenting human vision.
