UW and Starlab Laboratories have independently succeeded in transmitting data via the brain-brain interface

The teams of the two research teams separately crossed several well-known technologies for the direct exchange of data between people - more precisely, their brains. Apparently, projects from the US and Europe represent precedents for the transfer of information between people without any non-verbal means. Nevertheless, while this "telepathic" technology is very crude and hardly has practical application.

An article published last week in the scientific journal PLOS One tells how neuroscientists and computer scientists from the University of Washington in Seattle describe a brain-brain interface that allows two people to play a simple video game together. A little earlier, Barcelona-based Starlab spoke about a developed method for conveying short words such as “ciao” (it. - “ciao”) with binary code between minds on two different continents.

In both studies, the following system was used. The sender wore a helmet for electroencephalography, which detected the signals generated by the cerebral cortex when he thought about the movement of his arm or leg. Then the signal was transmitted via the Internet to a computer, which translated it into pulses delivered to the recipient's brain using a magnetic coil. In the case of Starlab, flashes of light came to the recipient, and in an experiment at the University of Washington, magnetic pulsation caused an involuntary trembling of the wrist over the touchpad, clicking on which led to missile launches in a computer game.

Neither EEG nor the described type of brain stimulation (the so-called transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS) are new technologies. However, their union was new in order to establish a simple communication system. Starlab researchers have suggested that these "super-interacting technologies" could "ultimately have a huge impact on the social structure of our civilization."

Nevertheless, today the technology remains extremely limited - neither emotions, nor thoughts or ideas were transmitted in the experiment. Instead, the human brain was used as a relay to transmit a signal between computers. The transfer speed was also not impressive.

Safety instructions limit the use of TMS systems to a single pulse in 20 seconds. But even without this restriction, a person in an EEG helmet can transmit only a few bits of information per minute, since a deliberate change in the curve of electromagnetic signals requires intentional concentration. For comparison, according to one estimate, human speech transmits about 3,000 bits per minute . This means that a 90-second conversation would have to be mentally transmitted all day or even longer.

Of course, the researchers intend to accelerate and refine the transmission of information from brain to brain. University of Washington researcher Andreas Stocco announced that his team received a $ 1 million grant from the WM Keck Foundation to upgrade equipment and experiment with various ways of exchanging information with your mind, including using focused ultrasound waves that can stimulate neural ending through the bones of the skull.

Stocco argues that an important application of technology is to test theories about how neurons present information, especially about abstract concepts. For example, if a scientist believes that he has managed to isolate neurons that are responsible, say, for the image of a yellow plane, one way to prove this is to transfer the neural circuit to another person and interrogate on a given topic.

You can see this interface in different ways. On the one hand, it is an incredibly cool toy that we developed, because it is futuristic and is a technical breakthrough, although it has no direct relation to science. On the other hand, for the future, this is the best way to test hypotheses about how the brain encodes information.

Based on MIT Technology Review .