Laboratories UW and Starlab independently achieved success in the transmission of data via the brain-brain interface.

The teams of 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 United States and Europe constitute precedents for the transfer of information between people without any non-verbal means. However, so far this “telepathic” technology is very rough and hardly has practical application.



An article published last week in the scientific journal PLOS One describes how neurologists and informatics at 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, the Barcelona-based company Starlab spoke about the developed method of transmitting short words, such as “chao” (it. - “ciao”) with a 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 a hand or a leg. The signal was then transmitted via the Internet to a computer, which translated it into impulses delivered to the recipient's brain using a magnetic coil. In the case of Starlab, flashes of light came to the addressee, and in the University of Washington experiment, the magnetic pulsation caused the wrist to involuntarily tremble over the touchpad, pressing which led to rocket launches in a computer game.

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Neither the EEG nor the described type of brain stimulation (the so-called transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS) are new technologies. However, their integration was new in order to establish a simple communication system. Starlab researchers have suggested that these "superinteracting technologies" can "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 rate is also not impressive.



Safety instructions limit the use of TMS systems to one pulse per 20 seconds. But even without this limitation, 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 deliberate concentration. For comparison, according to one of the estimates, human speech transmits about 3000 bits per minute . This means that a 90-second conversation mentally would have to be transmitted all day or even longer.



Of course, the researchers intend to accelerate and refine the transfer of information from the brain to the brain. Andreas Stocco, a researcher at the University of Washington, reported that he received a $ 1 million grant from the WM Keck Foundation to upgrade equipment and conduct experiments with various ways of exchanging information between minds, including focused ultrasound waves that can stimulate nerve waves. endings through the bones of the skull.



Stokko 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 was able to identify the neurons that are responsible, say, for the image of a yellow plane, one of the ways to prove this is to transfer the neural circuit to another person and poll 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 .