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I became obsessed with the relationship between the brain and the mind after suffering a series of concussions playing football and rugby in college.
我在读大学时因踢足球、打橄榄球，经历了一系列脑振荡后，变得沉迷于研究大脑和意念之间的关系。
I felt my mind change for years after.
我感觉多年以后我的思维变了。
I was studying computers at the time, and it felt as though I had damaged my hardware and that my software was running differently.
当时我在学习计算机，就感觉仿佛我的硬件受损了，导致软件运行的方式也改变了。
Over the following years, a close friend suffered a serious neck injury and multiple friends and family members were struggling with crippling mental health issues.
之后的几年里，我的一位密友颈部严重受伤，好几位朋友和家人都经受着严重的心理健康问题。
All around me, people that I loved dearly were being afflicted by ailments of the nervous system or the mind.
我身边的挚爱之人都受到神经系统或精神上的小毛小病的困扰。
I was grappling with all of this while pursuing an MFA in Design and Technology at Parsons when a friend and fellow student showed me an open-source tutorial on how to build a low-cost single-channel EEG system to detect brain activity.
我在帕森斯设计学院读设计和科技专业的艺术硕士时就深受其扰，当时我的朋友，也是同学给我看了一个开源指南，说的是如何创建一个低成本的单通道脑电系统，用于检测大脑活动。
After a couple long nights of hacking and tinkering, I saw my brainwaves dancing across the screen for the very first time.
彻夜钻研摆弄了好几天后，我第一次在屏幕上看到了我跃动的脑电波。
And that moment changed my life.
那个瞬间改变了我的人生。
In that moment, I felt as though I had the possibility to help myself and the people I loved.
在那个瞬间，我觉得我有可能可以帮上我自己和我爱的人。
And I also realized that I couldn't do it alone.
我也意识到我不能孤军奋战。
I needed help.
我需要帮助。
So in 2013, in Brooklyn, with some like-minded friends, I started OpenBCI, an open-source neurotechnology company.
所以在 2013 年，在布鲁克林，我和几位志同道合的朋友创立了 OpenBCI，一家开源的神经科学公司。
In the beginning, our goal was to build an inward-pointing telescope and to share the blueprints with the world so that anybody with a computer could begin peering into their own brain.
刚开始的时候，我们的目标是打造一个向内的望远镜，将这幅蓝图分享给全世界，这样任何使用电脑的人都可以探秘自己的大脑。
At first, we were an EEG-only company.
起初，我们是一家只做脑电图的公司。
We sold brain sensors to measure brain activity.
我们出售大脑传感器，测量大脑活动。
I thought that's what people wanted.
我以为那就是人们想要的东西。
But over time, we discovered people doing very strange things with our technology.
但随着时间的推移，我们发现人们会用我们的技术做些很奇怪的事。
Some people were connecting the equipment to the stomach to measure the neurons in the gut and study gut-brain connection and the microbiome.
有些人会把设备连到腹部上，测量肠胃中的神经元，研究肠脑关联和微生物群。
Others were using the tools to build new muscle sensors and controllers for prosthetics and robotics.
有些人把这些工具做成了新的肌肉传感器和控制器，用于外科修复和机器人技术。
And some were designing new devices and peripheral add-ons that could be connected to the platform to measure new types of data that I had never heard of before.
有些人设计出了新设备和周边附件，连到平台上测量一些我闻所未闻的新型数据。
What we learned from all of this is that the brain by itself is actually quite boring.
由此我得到的结论是大脑本身其实是很无趣的。
Turns out brain data alone lacks context.
单看大脑数据没有什么背景信息。
And what we ultimately care about is not the brain, but the mind, consciousness, human cognition.
说到底我们关心的不是大脑，而是思维、意识、人类认知。
When we have things like EMG sensors to measure muscle activity or ECG sensors to measure heart activity, eye trackers and even environmental sensors to measure the world around us, all of this makes the brain data much more useful.
我们拿着肌电传感器去测量肌肉活动，拿着心电传感器去测量心脏活动，眼动仪，甚至拿着环境传感器去测量身边的世界，这些都让大脑数据能派得上更多的用场。
But the organs around our body, our sensory receptors, are actually much easier to collect data from than the brain, and also arguably much more important for determining the things that we actually care about: emotions, intentions and the mind overall.
但我们体内的器官、感受器从大脑采集数据要简单得多，按理说也在左右我们真心在乎的东西——情绪、意图、整个思维的时候要关键得多。
Additionally, we realized that people weren't just interested in reading from the brain and the body.
除此之外，我们发现人们不只是对读取大脑和身体有兴趣。
They were also interested in modulating the mind through various types of sensory stimulation.
他们还对借助各种感官刺激调节意念有兴趣。
