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Mindflex: Basketball for your brain Date published: 1/10/2009
LAS VEGAS-- I promised I'd look for products at the Consumer Electronics Show that wouldn't break the bank at a time when banks are literally in danger of breaking.But I didn't really think I'd get excited about inexpensive gadgets amid the shiny, pricey laptops with touch screens that do backflips and the skinny big-screen LED HDTVs that save you money on electricity after you spend a small fortune to take them home. Turns out I was wrong. Turns out that the one thing I've seen so far that It's the Mattel Mindflex, which is pretty much basketball for your brain. Up until now, the only product Mattel has made that involved kids straining to will things to happen was the body- image-bending Barbie doll. And all Barbie did was make a lot of girls grow up feeling bad about themselves and a lot of plastic surgeons--most of them men--rich. Mattel claims Mindflex will increase players' mental acuity, and it may well increase concentration and focus. But you can also increase concentration and focus by playing baseball and basketball or (dare I say it?) by reading a book. Of course, the reality is that you're probably more likely to get kids to concentrate on a gadget like this than by trying to make them do something healthy or proved to be mind- In Mindflex, a simple, geeky-looking headset, measures brain wave activity, and players learn to maneuver the ball, which is floating on air generated by a fan, through various obstacles using only their minds. It's essentially biofeedback, but creates Other gaming companies are working on similar interfaces for more sophisticated (read violent) games for teenage players. Instead of controlling a ball, players will control murderous zombies. Maybe it's because I grew up on sci-fi, but I like the Mindflex (which should go on sale in the fall). It also makes me feel as though I'm exercising my brain and that it's throbbing with other worldly power. That's an illusion, of course. The truth is that the Mindflex is more likely to enlarge kids' behinds--and mine--than our mental powers, because brainwave interfaces don't even require players to exercise their thumbs. Kids may get bored with manipulating the Mindflex's little floating ball faster than I would. But when they're using their mental powers to will video game zombies to kill people instead, it'll be a different story.
Michael Zitz: 540/846-5163
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