This meant they were able to train the first rat to produce a certain type of brain activity and pass this onto the second rat that in turn passed it onto the third. But this one is even wilder than most.
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As the name suggests, the method involves linking brains together to create a collective network of thought. The study conducted by the neuroscientists at Duke University used brain-machine interfaces (BMI) to investigate the compatibility of brain networks on these animals. The next step – brain to brain interfaces – has also been demonstrated by various groups transmitting messages across distances. But this is the first time that anybody has directly wired together multiple brains to complete a task-a so-called brain-to-brain interface.
Now, Duke researchers have, with the “Brainet”. In another, impulses were administered to the entire group, who was then rewarded if they united their brain activity.
Biological brains are superior to electronic computers in several ways, especially coalescing abstract information into a concrete model. Collectively, they accurately matched the input to the correct output in 87 percent of the trials.
Brainets consistently performed at the same or higher levels than single rats in these tasks.
As the animals gained more experience and training in the motor task, researchers found that they adapted to the challenge.
Scientists are saying they have recently learned that monkey brains are, apparently, quite attuned to each other. Here’s the twist: Monkey A only controlled the horizontal movement, while Monkey B controlled the vertical movement.
After successfully combining the mind of rats, the researchers shifted their focus to monkeys. In a super test of sorts, three monkeys were connected and tasked with moving the arm, but in three dimensions.
In the case of the monkeys, the computer combined the signals from the monkeys to move the image of the arm on the screen. This necessity for the study should be obvious, since if all monkeys would want all the juice, the results would have been… inconclusive. The rats’ minds were then connected to create a brainet. Similarly, Nicolelis has health designs for the superbrain, hoping that language difficulties incurred by a stroke or similar ailment could be solved by connecting the relevant regions of a healthy person’s brain to the same area in the brain of someone needing to re-learn those skills. This was undeniably a major green light for the future of “brain joining”, given the elevated efficacy of the animals involved when working together. Our socially-networked world already poses a host of privacy concerns about the data we generate.
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But, as the New York Times indicates, there are certainly ethical concerns to consider. Will neural privacy issues be the ethical concern of tomorrow?
