@ Slimebeats - I found this research paper, "Thought translation, tennis and Turing tests in the vegetative state" on springerlink which is the case used in this article, it looks like it does work.
They are monitoring the brain activity for two very different tasks, tennis, which is a motor task and moving through complex objects, which is a spatial navigation task. whichever part of the brain is active by thinking of the task, it will be translated to yes or no.
It does work.