University of
Washington researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain
connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the
team's initial demonstration a year ago. In the newly published study, which
involved six people, researchers were able to transmit the signals from one
person's brain over the Internet and use these signals to control the hand
motions of another person within a split second of sending that signal. At the
time of the first experiment in August 2013, the UW team was the first to
demonstrate two human brains communicating in this way. The new study brings the brain-to-brain
interfacing paradigm from an initial demonstration to something that is closer
to a deliverable technology. Now researchers have replicated our methods and
know that they can work reliably with walk-in participants.
The research
team combined two kinds of non-invasive instruments and fine-tuned software to
connect two human brains in real time. The process is fairly straightforward.
One participant is hooked to an electroencephalography machine that reads brain
activity and sends electrical pulses via the Web to the second participant, who
is wearing a swim cap with a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil placed near
the part of the brain that controls hand movements. Using this setup, one
person can send a command to move the hand of the other by simply thinking
about that hand movement. The UW study involved three pairs of participants.
Each pair included a sender and a receiver with different roles and
constraints. They sat in separate buildings on campus about a half mile apart
and were unable to interact with each other in any way – except for the link
between their brains.
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