Intel Corp researchers say that by 2020 people won’t need a keyboard or a mouse to control their PCs as they will be using their own brain to send commands and surf through the Internet.

At the moment scientists at Intel's research lab in Pittsburgh are looking for ways to read and harness human brain waves so they can be used to operate computers, television sets and cell phones. The brain waves would be harnessed with Intel-developed sensors implanted in people's brains. Thus, the movie fiction will become an everyday realia when an alien hi tech gadget is implanted into your head. But, as it is assured by the scientists no one would be forced to such procedures.

"I think human beings are remarkable adaptive," said Andrew Chien, vice president of research and director of future technologies research at Intel Labs. "If you told people 20 years ago that they would be carrying computers all the time, they would have said, 'I don't want that. I don't need that.' Now you can't get them to stop [carrying devices]. There are a lot of things that have to be done first but I think [implanting chips into human brains] is well within the scope of possibility."

Intel research scientist Dean Pomerleau said that along with his research teammates from Intel, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, they are currently working on decoding human brain activity. The team has used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) machines to determine that blood flow changes in specific areas of the brain based on what word or image someone is thinking of. People tend to show the same brain patterns for similar thoughts, he added. 

Thus, if two people think of the image of a bear or hear the word bear or even hear a bear growl, a neuroimage would show similar brain activity.

Pomerleau said researchers are close to gaining the ability to build brain sensing technology into a head set that could be used to manipulate a computer. The next step is development of a tiny, far less cumbersome sensor that could be implanted inside the brain.