Mind-Controlled Optical Manipulation

Brain-computer interface (BCI) has been developed for decades to directly establish communication between human brain and external devices. Current BCI has been widely exploited in the emerging macroscopical field such as mind-controlled mechanical devices and robots; it is an open challenge to manipulate microscopic devices or nanoparticles through mind control. Here, we demonstrate a synthetic mind-controlled optical manipulation (MCOM) platform that integrates BCI with a spatial light modulator (SLM) to generate dynamic light fields (e.g., vortex beams). Through human mind instructions, the MCOM perceives the mind signal and translates the information into a series of optical holograms for complex particle manipulation. This work is the first implementation of the combination of the intelligence of the human brain with the manipulative power of optics, merging the two noncontact techniques into a real noncontact optical manipulation in the microscopic and nanoscopic world, which may find applications in soft-matter physics, biomedical engineering, and nanotechnology.