A Gowerlabs anatomical head phantom was shown in conjunction with Facebook’s Brain-Computer Interface project, hoping to develop a noninvasive thought-typing system.

Chevillet said his group at Facebok is continuing its work on finding noninvasive ways to figure out what’s happening within the brain, too. It’s investigating how light may be able to indirectly track brain activity, specifically by using near-infrared light to measure oxygen saturation levels in your brain.

Though any sort of think-to-type device you might be able to buy is still far in the future, Chevillet can already imagine how he thinks it should look: a pair of glasses that uses augmented reality and includes a brain-based method for doing everything from sending a text message to adjusting the volume of a song to simply performing the equivalent of a mouse click.

“The use cases we envision are certainly for everybody,” he said.