Neurologically, scientists are still working to understand boredom's effects on the brain, but they theorize that the state involves a failure in the neural networks that control attention.

WSJ: Interesting Fact: There's a Yawning Need for Boring Professors

If Mischel and his team succeed, they will have outlined the neural circuitry of self-control.

NEWYORKER: Don��t!

"This is a really small microchip and on this chip we've got the intelligence which can actually model the neural signals responsible for appetite control, " Prof Toumazou told the BBC.

BBC: News

Researchers have developed neural technologies that allow users to control wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs with their minds.

FORBES: This is your brain. This is your brain... hacked?

Dr Husbands and his colleagues have found a way to mimic the workings of NO in the neural networks they are evolving to create control programs for robots.

BBC: Robot brains become more human

Dr Mozer's household-control system consists of a number of different neural networks, each in charge of one aspect of his domestic economy.

ECONOMIST: The learning home

But now, NeuroSky (a fab(u)less startup of US chip designers and Russian neuroscientists chillin' in NorCal) claims a "breakthrough" in non-invasive neural sensors allowing low-cost, dry (no contact gels) neural mapping solutions to be applied to those things you'd most like to mind control (spouse, voters, TV, game console, cellphone).

ENGADGET: NeuroSky to offer thought control without those pesky brain implants