Nothing challenges your brain like a Rubik’s cube puzzle. Matching the colors on each side can be both frustrating and rewarding when you finally do it. Making it all one color would be harder. Say, a brainy pink. Then add some actual brain details and this becomes an extra challenging puzzle.

Not only would this be hard, but you are constantly reminded of your brain, which is struggling. This design comes from Jason Freeny. It may be the grossest puzzle ever. Hopefully the texture isn’t all squishy and wet. Great puzzle for mad scientists.

Here’s a Sharp e-dictionary that looks like a phone. It’s called the Brain PW-AC10 and aims to fool people with it’s BlackBerry-esque candybar looks. The device claims to be the industry’s lightest e-dictionary while carrying two AAA batteries that keep it going for a full 110 hours.

That 2.4-inch LCD QVGA screen will take some getting used to, but the device packs the usual English-Japanese translator, a flashcard feature, and a seven-language traveling phrase book with color images.

The Twist Alarm Clock from D-Forme makes you think when you wake up. It uses two displays along with two rotatable sections to give you a math problem to solve, thereby truly waking you up and making you think.

The alarm won’t shut off until you solve the math problem. For example 2 + 5 = 7. The idea is that you aren’t really awake unless your brain is functioning. The Twist Alarm clock is only available in Japan at the moment, where they are excellent in math in the morning, for just $30.

Here’s one we hope performs as well as they say. The ThermaHelm helmet could be a life saver for many. It boasts a few lightweight chemical packs built into the helmets lining. One of the packs has water and the other one nitrate. Together, in a sudden reaction, they cause a cooling reaction that can last up to 45 minutes.

That is important because it helps improve the chances of the rider’s survival after a crash, as it stabilizes the temperature of the brain. The ThermaHelm is expected to arrive in July of this year with GPS, a video camera and Bluetooth. We hope this one saves many lives.

We’ve all heard that cellphone radiation can be bad for you, even if it does remain unproven. But a new study in mice suggests that using cellphones may help prevent some of the brain-wasting effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

After long-term exposure to electromagnetic waves like those in cell phones, mice that were genetically altered to develop Alzheimer’s performed as well on memory and thinking skill tests as healthy mice. So I guess cellphones could be good for us and bad at the same time.

You say potato I say pot-a-to. I think we can both agree that this thing looks more like a deformed mutant brain than a potato any day. Seriously, would you buy a potato that looked like this one? Me either. Anyway, if you like your USB hubs on the disturbingly weird side, this is for you, ya damn freak.

It’s a 4-port USB 2.0 compliant hub that is what it is. The USB Potato 4-Port Hub will cost you $16 from Brando. Not Marlon Brando, the gadget site. I know I’ve seen this thing it several B movies, but I just can’t place it.

There have been plenty of conceptual gadgets that claim to control computers with just the brain, but the difficulty is getting them ready for the commercial market. That’s where NaturalPoint comes in. They are serving up a new pair of SmartNav 4 human-computer interface devices that will let users control all basic tasks with just by using their noggin.

The AT and EG models are designed so that physically handicapped individuals can control their PCs like a Jedi, moving the mouse around by with head movements and selecting commands and phrases on a virtual keyboard. Like Stephen Hawking for instance.

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a Jedi and having the ability to move objects with your mind, your dreams are about to come true. Mindflex is the new mental acuity game from Mattel, arriving this fall. It may not let you lift an X-Wing out of a Dagobah swamp, but you will be able to move a ball with the power of your mind.

A lightweight headset with sensors measures your brainwave activity. When you focus your concentration, a small foam ball will rise on a gentle stream of air. Relax your mind and the ball will drop. It’s not just mental, there’s also some physical stuff involved as you try to guide the ball through a customizable obstacle course.

In what could be the first step toward recording your dreams, researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor. That means it won’t be long before you can share your thoughts and dreams with others the way you share your flickr pics. They’ve successfully displayed simple images produced in the human brain on a computer screen.

The device converts electrical signals sent to the visual cortex into images that can be viewed on a computer screen. In the experiment, they showed test subjects the six letters in the word neuron and successfully reconstructed the word on screen by measuring brain activity. So, is this awesome or scary as hell? I vote scary.

Consider this a concept that that might have been and may still be, should Steve Jobs get a bit too enamored with The Matrix. It could be the next hot Apple item, leaving the iPod and iPhone in the dust. Designer Paul Micarelli came up with it.

The Symbiosis™ Neural Interface:Direct brain-computer link means your mind and computer are one. It sports Intel Fusion™, Quantum Processing that uses the power of the atom to instantly compute at the speed of thought., Holographic Data Storage thanks to the iThink’s tiny internal holochip with an amazing individual capacity of over 666 Yottabytes for seemingly infinite augmented memory, Intra-neural Communication lets you mentally allow or block any kind of signal you want. With the iThink, it wont be long until you are docking yourself like some Borg in the hive collective, rather then docking your iPod.

Some German scientists with a love of bad horror movies and some time on their hands, have come up with the nerdiest brain-computer interface yet. It’s from the Technical University of Braunschweig.

No placing electrodes on your head with this one. This one is all about wearing a large metal helmet full of sensors, that can detect your brain activity through your hair. They claim that the system is good enough to control an RC car and they’re hoping to use it in wheelchairs and prosthetics. Check out a video below.

The Mind Chair will blow your mind if the product description is accurate and can be believed. It uses sensory substitution techniques that enable the sitter to see moving images right in their brain. The nerves in the skin are the mode of transport. Cool and yet very very creepy. Just sit somebody down in this thing and you could interrogate them as if you had just pumped them full of psychotropic drugs.

The Mind Chair will be made available to curious onlookers at the MoMA in New York as part of the Design and the Electric Mind exhibition. Problem is, like a scene from some Phillip K. Dick novel, did you experience what you thought you did? Or in reality did they sit you down in that chair and brainwash you? I suppose you’ll never know. Sucks to be you. I’m staying away from the chair, thank you.