6 ms·

Researcher controls colleague’s motions in first human brain-to-brain interface

88 points by Shenglong 13y ago

oh_teh_meows 13y ago
If the detection accuracy can be improved, one can theoretically telepathically communicate with another using Morse code :) Also, since we have the ability to 'write' a low res image onto a person's retina, I can also communicate with that person by just typing on a keyboard. The receiver would see alphabets flashing in his mind.
- btown 13y ago
  Can you share the article about the 'writing' of a low res image onto the visual cortex?
  - oh_teh_meows 13y ago
    Ooops sorry! It's being designed, no clinical experiment yet. I should reword my original comment. http://www.polymtl.ca/polystim/en/navigation/Prothesevisuelleintra-corticale.php http://www.polymtl.ca/polystim/en/navigation/Prothesevisuell... There had been experiments showing that visual cortex stimulation to generate imagery is possible: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1528-1157.1998.tb05127.x/pdf http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1528-1157.1998....
- swalsh 13y ago
  i'm sure the translation would be a very difficult problem, but the idea of transferring an image from one person to another telepathically is ground shattering in terms of impact. Take every day tasks when working with a team right now. I spend days writing documents solely for the purpose of communicating ideas from my own head to others. Still even with extensive documents with images, and text, miscommunication is not uncommon. Even still, when I program I mostly have an "image" of the program in my head. Imagine if a computer knew me well enough to translate that "image" to actual code. This kind of stuff is a LONG ways away... but it seems like the basic concepts are being proven, and its both exciting and scary. What it means to be human could be different in 2100. If this technology is expensive, and we still have capitalism, and there's still a large class of poor. The digital divide could turn that casim into the grand canon. I'm scared that the technology is coming faster than our capability to handle it socially.
  - oh_teh_meows 13y ago
    Writing image (onto retina) is quite feasible, it's reading that is a problem now. A while back there was an experiment conducted to 'read' image in a person's mind, but what they had really done was mapping a certain image/video clip to a certain expression of the brain's activity. It can't read arbitrary image yet. http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/ http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/ Correction: we can read arbitrary images, but so far only with cat's brain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLb9EIiSyG8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLb9EIiSyG8
  - swalsh 13y ago
    Thought of another application. Let's say you're a teacher. One of the hardest parts of education today is relating a concept by using other concepts that are more familiar to students. Its a translation problem, but there's an unknown variable. The teacher (especially if they're talking to a large class) may not actively know how well or how correctly their students are understanding the topic. Assuming that a system is good enough to commercialize, there's probably some AI tech that's gaining traction too. If you could use AI to analyze a students understanding, the computer could interactively forge the lesson. The result would be faster, more accurate learning. Learning, in my opinion being one of the biggest barriers to progress, the pace of change would be incredible!
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >I'm sure the translation would be a very difficult problem, but the idea of transferring an image from one person to another telepathically is ground shattering in terms of impact. Take every day tasks when working with a team right now. I spend days writing documents solely for the purpose of communicating ideas from my own head to others. Yes, forget about those uses. Judging from history, such a technology will more likely be used by our overlords to send us commands to obey...
tlarkworthy 13y ago
an extraordinarily gimmicky headline orientated experiment. However, it is still genuinely cool despite that. Nowhere near a precision brain to brain interface that could be useful, but its the suggestion that one might be possible and if people are twitchy about mobile phones radiating the brain, I doubt they will go for a TMS machine that focuses huge magnetic pulses into the brain. Pulses that are so strong the virtually unferrous bio matter still sheds electrons making your brain do unknown chemistry that makes your finger twitch slightly.
canistr 13y ago
I await the day we get a brain API that can read generic actions and perform the same actions (e.g. read when someone bends their index finger and equally force the bending of said finger)
bitwize 13y ago
Oh boy! Sense/NET here we come!
cheapsteak 13y ago
How to replicate this study in your living room: Get a 'remote controlled cockroach' kit, a Star Wars Force Trainer, some wires to hook the force trainer's trigger to the cockroach kit's remote control, stick the receiver on your friend's head. This seriously doesn't seem to have broken any new ground, only mashed together two existing technologies for a easily misinterpreted headline
- WestCoastJustin 13y ago
  > doesn't seem to have broken any new ground, only mashed together two existing technologies I'd argue that new inventions are created by mashing existing technologies, often emerging or bleeding edge, and creating something new. Henry Ford didn't invent the combustion engine, transmission, suspension, etc, but he did mash these things together into something new. What we are seeing in the video and research is something new and pretty exciting if you take it a couple steps further. Think about replaying these signals, building a play book, etc. ps. If you have some time to kill, I would check out this video called, "Everything Is A Remix", which talks about this idea @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk
  - simonster 13y ago
    Henry Ford is famous for creating a useful product that people wanted to buy. This is more of a parlor trick. It's sexy, but it's not going to help anyone do anything, nor does it incorporate any significant technical or scientific advances that could be useful to future brain-computer interface development. The authors seem to be aware that it has little scientific importance, since they published it on their website instead of in a scientific journal or on arXiv.
  - emiliobumachar 13y ago
    I agree with your larger point, but the example is flawed. Ford did not invent the car, he "just" made it much cheaper by inventing the assembly line.
    - 13y ago
SideshowB0B 13y ago
I wouldn't put this beyond the possibility of an incredibly elaborate prank. This is about as trust worthy as a Las Vegas magician's act. ...and now, I will saw my assistant in half!
j2d3 13y ago
A powerful version of this is central to the plot of Gamer (2009).
losethos 13y ago
http://virtual-notary.org/ http://virtual-notary.org/ Virtual-Notary.Org hereby notes that on Date: Tuesday August 27, 2013 19:04.15 EDT (UTC-0400) a random drawing in the range [1, 100000], inclusive, based on a hardware source of true randomness, yielded the following decision. Random Value: 12109 tribe of Naphtali, were fifty and three thousand and four hundred. 1:44 These are those that were numbered, which Moses and Aaron numbered, and the princes of Israel, being twelve men: each one was for the house of his fathers. 1:45 So were all those that were numbered of the children of Israel, by the house of their fathers, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war in Israel; 1:46 Even all they that were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty. 1:47 But the Levites after the tribe of their fathers were not numbered among them. 1:48 For the LORD had spoken unto Moses, saying, 1:49 Only thou shalt not number the tribe of Levi, neither take the sum of them among the children of Israel: 1:50 But thou shalt appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of testimony, and over all the vessels thereof, and over all things that belong to it: they shall bear the tabernacle, and all the vessels thereof; and they shall minister unto it, and shall encamp round about the tabernacle. 1:51 And when the tabernacle setteth forward, the Levites shall take it down: and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
iopq 13y ago
It's habbiding! What next, communicating via thoughts?
contingencies 13y ago
Strangely, I was literally just discussing the near-term inevitability of this with someone last night. While an ever-more subjugated, time poor mass of humanity walls themselves in to ever smaller apartments in ever larger cities, stringing along their physical bodies through ever more artificial means, moving ever further from nature and sustainability, we see the rising tide of ever more immersive virtual experience: writing, phonographs, radio, television, computer games, three dimensional environments - now with depth - eye tracking, motion tracking, direct nervous system stimulation, even virtual emotion through the megacoroporate pharmacopia ("ever feel tired? hard to focus? unhappy? ask your doctor about..."). Humanity nears a fissure of potential future realities: constrain our engine of consumption, or face handing a once virtuous and verdant home planet down to succeeding generations as a biological desert demanding ever more artificial means of sustenance for an ever-smaller elite, clinging desperately to a bygone quality of life through the corporate-military force of dynastic capital. Well, not quite so hyperbolic, but that was the gist: it'd be a shame if instead of dealing with the issues facing our planet we all just shut down and went virtual.

88 points by Shenglong 13y ago

If the detection accuracy can be improved, one can theoretically telepathically communicate with another using Morse code :) Also, since we have the ability to 'write' a low res image onto a person's retina, I can also communicate with that person by just typing on a keyboard. The receiver would see alphabets flashing in his mind.

btown 13y ago
Can you share the article about the 'writing' of a low res image onto the visual cortex?
- oh_teh_meows 13y ago
  Ooops sorry! It's being designed, no clinical experiment yet. I should reword my original comment. http://www.polymtl.ca/polystim/en/navigation/Prothesevisuelleintra-corticale.php http://www.polymtl.ca/polystim/en/navigation/Prothesevisuell... There had been experiments showing that visual cortex stimulation to generate imagery is possible: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1528-1157.1998.tb05127.x/pdf http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1528-1157.1998....
swalsh 13y ago
i'm sure the translation would be a very difficult problem, but the idea of transferring an image from one person to another telepathically is ground shattering in terms of impact. Take every day tasks when working with a team right now. I spend days writing documents solely for the purpose of communicating ideas from my own head to others. Still even with extensive documents with images, and text, miscommunication is not uncommon. Even still, when I program I mostly have an "image" of the program in my head. Imagine if a computer knew me well enough to translate that "image" to actual code. This kind of stuff is a LONG ways away... but it seems like the basic concepts are being proven, and its both exciting and scary. What it means to be human could be different in 2100. If this technology is expensive, and we still have capitalism, and there's still a large class of poor. The digital divide could turn that casim into the grand canon. I'm scared that the technology is coming faster than our capability to handle it socially.
- oh_teh_meows 13y ago
  Writing image (onto retina) is quite feasible, it's reading that is a problem now. A while back there was an experiment conducted to 'read' image in a person's mind, but what they had really done was mapping a certain image/video clip to a certain expression of the brain's activity. It can't read arbitrary image yet. http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/ http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/ Correction: we can read arbitrary images, but so far only with cat's brain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLb9EIiSyG8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLb9EIiSyG8
- swalsh 13y ago
  Thought of another application. Let's say you're a teacher. One of the hardest parts of education today is relating a concept by using other concepts that are more familiar to students. Its a translation problem, but there's an unknown variable. The teacher (especially if they're talking to a large class) may not actively know how well or how correctly their students are understanding the topic. Assuming that a system is good enough to commercialize, there's probably some AI tech that's gaining traction too. If you could use AI to analyze a students understanding, the computer could interactively forge the lesson. The result would be faster, more accurate learning. Learning, in my opinion being one of the biggest barriers to progress, the pace of change would be incredible!
- coldtea 13y ago
  >I'm sure the translation would be a very difficult problem, but the idea of transferring an image from one person to another telepathically is ground shattering in terms of impact. Take every day tasks when working with a team right now. I spend days writing documents solely for the purpose of communicating ideas from my own head to others. Yes, forget about those uses. Judging from history, such a technology will more likely be used by our overlords to send us commands to obey...

tlarkworthy 13y ago

an extraordinarily gimmicky headline orientated experiment. However, it is still genuinely cool despite that. Nowhere near a precision brain to brain interface that could be useful, but its the suggestion that one might be possible and if people are twitchy about mobile phones radiating the brain, I doubt they will go for a TMS machine that focuses huge magnetic pulses into the brain. Pulses that are so strong the virtually unferrous bio matter still sheds electrons making your brain do unknown chemistry that makes your finger twitch slightly.

canistr 13y ago

I await the day we get a brain API that can read generic actions and perform the same actions (e.g. read when someone bends their index finger and equally force the bending of said finger)

bitwize 13y ago

Oh boy! Sense/NET here we come!

cheapsteak 13y ago

How to replicate this study in your living room: Get a 'remote controlled cockroach' kit, a Star Wars Force Trainer, some wires to hook the force trainer's trigger to the cockroach kit's remote control, stick the receiver on your friend's head. This seriously doesn't seem to have broken any new ground, only mashed together two existing technologies for a easily misinterpreted headline

WestCoastJustin 13y ago
> doesn't seem to have broken any new ground, only mashed together two existing technologies I'd argue that new inventions are created by mashing existing technologies, often emerging or bleeding edge, and creating something new. Henry Ford didn't invent the combustion engine, transmission, suspension, etc, but he did mash these things together into something new. What we are seeing in the video and research is something new and pretty exciting if you take it a couple steps further. Think about replaying these signals, building a play book, etc. ps. If you have some time to kill, I would check out this video called, "Everything Is A Remix", which talks about this idea @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk
- simonster 13y ago
  Henry Ford is famous for creating a useful product that people wanted to buy. This is more of a parlor trick. It's sexy, but it's not going to help anyone do anything, nor does it incorporate any significant technical or scientific advances that could be useful to future brain-computer interface development. The authors seem to be aware that it has little scientific importance, since they published it on their website instead of in a scientific journal or on arXiv.
- emiliobumachar 13y ago
  I agree with your larger point, but the example is flawed. Ford did not invent the car, he "just" made it much cheaper by inventing the assembly line.
  - 13y ago

SideshowB0B 13y ago

I wouldn't put this beyond the possibility of an incredibly elaborate prank. This is about as trust worthy as a Las Vegas magician's act. ...and now, I will saw my assistant in half!

j2d3 13y ago

A powerful version of this is central to the plot of Gamer (2009).

losethos 13y ago

http://virtual-notary.org/ http://virtual-notary.org/ Virtual-Notary.Org hereby notes that on Date: Tuesday August 27, 2013 19:04.15 EDT (UTC-0400) a random drawing in the range [1, 100000], inclusive, based on a hardware source of true randomness, yielded the following decision. Random Value: 12109 tribe of Naphtali, were fifty and three thousand and four hundred. 1:44 These are those that were numbered, which Moses and Aaron numbered, and the princes of Israel, being twelve men: each one was for the house of his fathers. 1:45 So were all those that were numbered of the children of Israel, by the house of their fathers, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war in Israel; 1:46 Even all they that were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty. 1:47 But the Levites after the tribe of their fathers were not numbered among them. 1:48 For the LORD had spoken unto Moses, saying, 1:49 Only thou shalt not number the tribe of Levi, neither take the sum of them among the children of Israel: 1:50 But thou shalt appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of testimony, and over all the vessels thereof, and over all things that belong to it: they shall bear the tabernacle, and all the vessels thereof; and they shall minister unto it, and shall encamp round about the tabernacle. 1:51 And when the tabernacle setteth forward, the Levites shall take it down: and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

iopq 13y ago

It's habbiding! What next, communicating via thoughts?

contingencies 13y ago

Strangely, I was literally just discussing the near-term inevitability of this with someone last night. While an ever-more subjugated, time poor mass of humanity walls themselves in to ever smaller apartments in ever larger cities, stringing along their physical bodies through ever more artificial means, moving ever further from nature and sustainability, we see the rising tide of ever more immersive virtual experience: writing, phonographs, radio, television, computer games, three dimensional environments - now with depth - eye tracking, motion tracking, direct nervous system stimulation, even virtual emotion through the megacoroporate pharmacopia ("ever feel tired? hard to focus? unhappy? ask your doctor about..."). Humanity nears a fissure of potential future realities: constrain our engine of consumption, or face handing a once virtuous and verdant home planet down to succeeding generations as a biological desert demanding ever more artificial means of sustenance for an ever-smaller elite, clinging desperately to a bygone quality of life through the corporate-military force of dynastic capital. Well, not quite so hyperbolic, but that was the gist: it'd be a shame if instead of dealing with the issues facing our planet we all just shut down and went virtual.