Nicholas West
Activist Post
There has been much speculation about what could be achieved in the area of human brain-to-brain transfer of information.
A series of studies have intimated at the possibilities:
- Brain-to-Brain Control Established Between Humans and Animals at Harvard
- Remote Controlled Humans Via Internet Now a Reality
- New Mind Reading Research Aims to Synchronize Humans
Now an international team is declaring a successful brain-to-brain data transfer between a person sitting in India to a receiving person in France.
 |
| image: PLOSone.org |
Journal PLOSone reports that the first brain-to-brain interface has been achieved, and that “brain stimulation techniques are now available for the realization of non-invasive computer-brain interfaces.” They summarize the history of this research as follows:
The evolution of civilization points to a progressive increase of the interrelations between human minds, where by “mind” we mean a set of processes carried out by the brain [1]. Until recently, the exchange of communication between minds or brains of different individuals has been supported and constrained by the sensorial and motor arsenals of our body. However, there is now the possibility of a new era in which brains will dialogue in a more direct way [2]. … Pioneering research in the 60’s using non-invasive means already demonstrated the voluntary control of alpha rhythm de-synchronization to send messages based on Morse code [11]. Over the last 15 years, technologies for non-invasive transmission of information from brains to computers have developed considerably, and today brain-computer interfaces embody a well-established, innovative field of study with many potential applications[12]–[16]. Recent work has demonstrated fully non-invasive human to rat B2B communication by combining motor imagery driven EEG in humans on the BCI sidewith ultrasound brain stimulation on the CBI-rat side [17]. … Here we show how to link two human minds directly by integrating two neurotechnologies – BCI and CBI –, fulfilling three important conditions, namely a) being non-invasive, b) cortically based, and c) consciously driven (Fig. 1). In this framework we provide the first demonstration of non-invasive direct communication between human minds. (emphasis added)
The method used was Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, which has shown the most promise in directly accessing the brain and “thought.”
The intensity of pulses was adjusted for each subject so that a) one particular orientation of the TMS-induced electric field produced phosphenes [19] (representing the “active direction” and coding the bit value “1”), and b) the orthogonal direction did not produce phosphenes (representing the “silent direction” and coding the bit value “0”). Subjects reported verbally whether or not they perceived phosphenes on stimulation.
