While telepathy has yet to become a real phenomenon, it looks like we’re one step closer to reading minds without the need for the traditional speech or writing. Researchers specializing in neuroscience and robotic engineering have demonstrated a successful brain-to-brain communication between a human in France and another in India.
The process involves using two machines—one is an emitter (for the human sender) that translates movement-based brain activity into some sort of binary code, and the other is a receiver that deciphers that code back into brain activity and injects it into the brain of the human recipient. The recipient then perceives the message as phospenes (stimulated flashes of light in the eye). To transmit the code from India to France, the experiment made use of a very common pathway—the Internet. The entire process allowed the researchers to relay two words, hola and ciao.
Related: 15-Year Old from the Philippines Invents Shoes That Can Charge Your Phone
The technology used to achieve this brain-to-brain communication is similar to recent developments that allow the disabled to control machineries (for instance, moving a wheelchair or robotic arm) by using brain activity.
“By using advanced precision neuro-technologies including wireless EEG and robotized TMS, we were able to directly and noninvasively transmit a thought from one person to another, without them having to speak or write,” says Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD, one of the authors of the experiment.
[Source: Eurekalert.org]
[Image source: Mauro Sartori]