The first “social network” of brains lets three people transmit thoughts to each other’s heads

piemadd · October 2, 2018

NOTE: I wasn't able to find any other posts about this, but please let me know if this is a repost.

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The ability to send thoughts directly to another person’s brain is the stuff of science fiction. At least, it used to be.

In recent years, physicists and neuroscientists have developed an armory of tools that can sense certain kinds of thoughts and transmit information about them into other brains. That has made brain-to-brain communication a reality.

OwO now you can know immediately if somebody likes you or not. This is cool. /s

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These tools include electroencephalograms (EEGs) that record electrical activity in the brain and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which can transmit information into the brain.

Big words can do big things. This reminds me of an RFID tag. A reader reads its material, and then that info can be copied onto another RFID tag, just our brains are the tags.

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In 2015, Andrea Stocco and his colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle used this gear to connect two people via a brain-to-brain interface. The people then played a 20 questions–type game.

An obvious next step is to allow several people to join such a conversation, and today Stocco and his colleagues announced they have achieved this using a world-first brain-to-brain network. The network, which they call BrainNet, allows a small group to play a collaborative Tetris-like game. “Our results raise the possibility of future brain-to-brain interfaces that enable cooperative problem-solving by humans using a ‘social network’ of connected brains,” they say.

I would kill to be able to play tetris in collaboration with other people without touching anything, but in the past people have been able to individually control things with their brains, just not with other people and with feedback.

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Stocco and his colleagues have created a network that allows three individuals to send and receive information directly to their brains. They say the network is easily scalable and limited only by the availability of EEG and TMS devices.

The proof-of-principle network connects three people: two senders and one person able to receive and transmit, all in separate rooms and unable to communicate conventionally. The group together has to solve a Tetris-like game in which a falling block has to be rotated so that it fits into a space at the bottom of the screen.

The two senders, wearing EEGs, can both see the full screen. The game is designed so the shape of the descending block fits in the bottom row either if it is rotated by 180 degrees or if it is not rotated. The senders have to decide which and broadcast the information to the third member of the group.

They are literally learning how to use the force here. There is probably very little data being processed in this.

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To do this, they vary the signal their brains produce. If the EEG picks up a 15 Hz signal from their brains, it moves a cursor toward the right-hand side of the screen. When the cursor reaches the right-hand side, the device sends a signal to the receiver to rotate the block.

The senders can control their brain signals by staring at LEDs on either side of the screen—one flashing at 15 Hz and the other at 17 Hz.

The receiver, attached to an EEG and a TMS, has a different task. The receiver can see only the top half of the Tetris screen, and so can see the block but not how it should be rotated. However, the receiver receives signals via the TMS from each sender, saying either “rotate” or “do not rotate.”

The signals consist of a single phosphene to indicate the block must be rotated or no flash of light to indicate that it should not be rotated. So the data rate is low—just one bit per interaction.

Well there we go, they look at two different LEDs, each at a different refresh rate, to then send different instructions.

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That’s interesting work that paves the way for more complex networks. The team says the information travels across a bespoke network set up between three rooms in their labs. However, there is no reason why the network cannot be extended to the Internet, allowing participants around the world to collaborate.

I would live to be able to go home one day, but on some sort of helmet, and then to be able to collaborative games with others.

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612212/the-first-social-network-of-brains-lets-three-people-transmit-thoughts-to-each-others-heads/