While it has yet to evolve into an official sport, thought-controlled computing is bound to inspire visions of an Olympic future at this year's games in Vancouver. Imagine athletes guiding curling stones into the end zone with the power of their minds, or bobsled drivers steering their ice-bound rockets by thought alone.

A Canadian version of the cutting-edge technology, which allows users to control electronics through brainwave signals, will be offered at the Games so that visitors can use the power of their minds to control lights placed on three landmarks situated on the other side of the country: the C. N. Tower, the Parliament Buildings, and the Horseshoe Falls. All three locations in Ontario will feature live light shows. Over a period of 17 days, the falling snowflakes of light will change and animate based on the brainwave activity levels of participants wearing special headsets in Vancouver.

The experience is the work of Toronto-based InteraXon, one of several companies providing high-tech displays at an Ontario Pavilion that will be helping the nation show-off to the world. For years, the company has been developing thought-control systems capable of performing simple, but impressive, tasks. A user wearing a headset has guided machinery to pour a can of pop into a glass, or lift the very chair he's sitting on up and into the air. At last year's Ontario Premier's Innovations Awards, InteraXon used its thought control system to operate an interactive performance made up of lights and musical instruments.

While it may seem like magic or a confidence scam, thought-controlled computing is grounded in real scientific concepts, and researchers around the world have spent the last decade exploring its use. Honda has used a version of the technology for its ASIMO android, allowing the robot to receive directions by thought from its engineers. Two toy sets sold in stores today, Hasbro's Mindflex and Uncle Milton's Star Wars Force Trainer, allow players to use brainwaves to adjust the speed of a fan and lift a ball into the air.

Any response that can be measured can be used to trigger a set of electronics, like clapping your hands to turn on a light, or using a voice command to place a hands-free call. Electrocardiograms (EKG) have been measuring responses from the human brain for nearly a hundred years, and for companies like InteraXon, using those same measurements to throw a switch on a computer is an easy connection to make.

Using thought-controls is an unusual experience, since there's nothing tangible to "feel". You sit wearing a goofy headset that pushes electrodes in key spots against your skin. These pick up the signals of activity from your mind, and then it's merely the task of discovering which thoughts will trigger the electronics to move. The key isn't to "concentrate" or "focus your will", as is often described for practicing magic in movies and books. It's simply increasing or lowering the levels of activity in your mind. Reading a book aloud, for example, produces a strong response.

In 1999, there was an attempt to use thought-controls to create a sport. Brainball, developed by the Smart Studio in Sweden, was a tabletop game where players tried to move a ball from one end into the player's zone in the other. While the science at the time turned heads around the world, the game itself failed to take off. Rather than have the headsets measure Beta brainwaves, the signals given off by the mind during active thinking, the game used Alpha brainwaves, the signals associated with relaxation. The result was that players had to "out-relax" each other, a difficult task to do competitively.

InteraXon has wisely avoided making that mistake: its system uses active brainwaves. And on February 12, the Olympics will get its first demonstration of thought-controls. The Olympic committee will have a great deal to think about as to how this new phenomenon might play a role in their Games in the future. Who knows: perhaps one day merely "wanting" a gold medal badly will be enough to actually win one.

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