Physicists and neuroscientists
have developed one of the world’s first brain-to-brain network, using
electroencephalograms (EEGs), which record electrical activity in the brain,
and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which can transmit information
into the brain, to allow people to communicate directly with each other’s
brains. Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle announced last
week that they successfully used their interface, which they call BrainNet, to
have a small group of people play a collaborative Tetris-like game using with
their minds.
To demonstrate that their network
works, researchers set up a game with two people who could see falling blocks
on a screen and the field at the bottom that they needed to fit into,
determining whether they needed to be rotated. They sent signals to a receiver,
who could only see the top of the screen, so they could see the blocks but not
whether they needed to be rotated, relying on signals from the senders. The
receiver was in another room to prevent any conventional communication, and
used the information from the senders to decide how to play each new piece.
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