There’s perhaps nothing more unique than your brain. And because we don’t yet live in a world where villains can hack into your thoughts (key word: yet), the next innovation in passwords could do away with those typed phrases and combinations of letters, numbers and punctuation and replace them with your thoughts.

This is way beyond the world of the Jetsons, and yet by TechCrunch‘s explanation of new research underway at the University of California-Berkeley’s School of Information, it sounds entirely within reach.

All you’d have to do is think your password, say researchers, while wearing a brainwave-reading headset that can basically read brainwaves to authenticate users. It’s called the Neurosky Mindset, and the professor behind it says that just concentrating on breathing is enough of a unique identifier to serve as a passthought.

The devices used to read these brainwaves are known as Electroencephalograms and basically measure electrical activity zipping along your scalp. And now that technology has whittled these EEG devices down to a manageable size, researchers are having a field day figuring out how to make mind-controlled computers a reality.

Now all we need is a brain-controlled computer that will recognize commands for “immediately change the channel if my nemesis Bill Pullman appears on the TV,” or “order more cheese, please.”

No More Typed Passwords, Berkeley Researchers Develop “Passthoughts” [TechCrunch]

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