'No!' the rest of the team, fervent video gamers, protested. 'Let's make a game!'

But Ho was on to something and they all realised it.

Instead of punishing drivers when their brainwaves showed signs of sleepiness, however, they developed a video game in which players would be rewarded when their brainwaves indicated concentration. A slow brainwave, up to 4Hz, is considered a sleep state; a faster 4Hz to 8Hz is theta, the drowsy or inattentive state that would occur in drivers before they fell asleep; 8Hz to 12Hz is alpha, where a person is relaxed or wakeful; and 12Hz to 30 Hz is called the beta state, where a person is showing activity or attention.

For the PolyU team's video game, they wanted to identify when a person's brainwaves were in the lower end of the beta state, not too active but still attentive: a state called 'sustained attention'.

They did not want to measure brainwaves the traditional way, in which a person has to wear a 'skull cap' of more than 30 electrodes that are attached to the head like tentacles.

Instead, they used a new headset developed by a company called Neurosky, which has a single electrode sensor on the forehead and other electrical sensors on the side - but which essentially looks like a regular set of headphones.

The game involves a rabbit strapped to a glider, flying through a virtual world trying to free other rabbits while escaping from evil monkeys. They called it Wind Chaser.

Most of the game - shooting the monkeys, flying in certain directions - is controlled with a traditional joystick game console.

The one difference is that the fuel for the glider corresponds to how attentive the player is: if Neurosky's headset could detect more beta waves of concentration, the fuel bar would go up and you would see a happy bunny next to it.

In initial trials, the fuel bar tended to go down when the game developers stood behind the players and shouted distracting words.

The team says this technology, if developed, could one day help children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in a harmless, engaging way: by training their beta waves in the game, they would come to know what concentration feels like via feedback from the game's fuel bar.

Two years on, the team is looking for investors and collaborating scientists. Just last month, the technology was demonstrated at Asia's Siggraph digital media conference.

But is it scientifically sound?

The M-Lab team is not the first to come up with the idea of developing electroencephalography (EEG) games as therapy. As early as 1958, a psychologist at the University of Chicago tried to teach an adult to alter his brainwave frequencies at will, a process now called neurofeedback.

It is only in the past few years, however, that commercial games in this neurofeedback realm have appeared. Games like MindFlex, produced with Mattel and released in 2009, get players to operate a fan that levitates a ball through a maze by increasing their concentration. Play Attention, which uses an armband instead of a headset, allows a person's concentrated brain signals to determine progress in the game.

And then there's Luminosity by Lumos Labs, launched in 2007, which does not measure brainwaves but involves a host of games designed to improve speed, attention, memory and problem-solving skills. The company attracted more than US$30 million in venture funding in June and at that time had 14 million online users.

Sandra Loo, director of paediatric neuropsychology at the School of Medicine of the University of California, Los Angeles, says she has already been approached by several new games companies, especially those harnessing EEG, to serve as an adviser. But she is wary, especially when they market themselves not just as improving focus overall but helping to cure ADHD. 'People would like to think this game tech with EEG would be the silver bullet,' Loo said. 'There's a race to develop.'

And while she acknowledges that the neuroscience literature does show differences in brainwaves among children with ADHD compared to the norm, whether games can actually work to change the functioning of their brainwaves in daily life is another question. Scientists have said existing research on ADHD and video games is not scientifically sound.

'People need to do more work to document that [EEG waves] actually relate to some kind of cognitive or behavioural change,' Loo said. 'How does EEG change when you give medication to kids with ADHD? Does simply going to the doctor's office affect a kid's focus performance? What other things are involved in focus?'

These are all questions Loo is looking into, but she said the number of commercial companies focusing on attention and brainwave activity outweighed those conducting independent research.

The Wind Chaser team knows a lot of scientific work needs to be done for its idea to work. And at this moment, the team does not yet include a psychiatrist or neurosurgeon: they are still gamers at heart and believe in the intrinsic power of games.

'We want to make the world a better place,' Ho said.

'And have games taken more seriously,' added Cord Krohn, another team member.