A few months back, I read a really excellent (but pretty old) blog post that explained how to hack a toy called a Mind Flex to extract and analyze the data within it. At first, I couldn't believe that such a thing existed. I mean, sure — gimmicky toys have been around for ages, so I wasn't shocked that the toy claimed to read the user's mind. It's not uncommon to fake this kind of gimmick. But, the fact that the Mind Flex contains a real, legit EEG chip that read your mind seemed almost too good to be true. I wondered if it was possible to take this hack a step further. Instead of just reading the data, or using the data to "control" something else, what if I were to read the data while performing some task and see what the data reveals about my performance during that task? I would need to complete an activity with quantifiable data to properly compare the brain activity to the task results to see if my attention levels correlated to the task's success or failure. Deciding on the actual action to measure wasn't tricky. I am a pretty avid video game player and had recently been trying to think of a way to integrate my gameplay statistics into a project, so I surmised that the combination would be an intriguing one.
So I asked myself: "if I could hack the Mind Flex and wear it while playing Call of Duty, what would the data show?" Could I establish a relationship between cognitive function and video game performance? In other words, when I'm focused and attentive, do I play better? Or, when I'm distracted, do I play worse? Is there no connection at all? I wasn't sure if my tests would succeed, but I decided to find out.