In this case, the human subjects are not each other.
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For the experiment, pairs of people played the well-known question-and-answer game “20 Questions”, but were located in two rooms a mile apart and hooked up to a brain-reading system. Participants guessed the correct object in 75 percent of the real games.
They weren’t also able to communicate via a phone or a messaging app. The Internet was used, but not in the usual way.
He sees a picture of an object on a screen. If the first one sees the flash of light, the answer is yes.
In the style of the game 20 Questions, the inquirer sends a question to the respondent with the click of a mouse.
Researchers also made the inquirers wear earplugs. If the inquirers hear the sounds, they could start to depend on it for the yes answer instead of the visual cortex response. The inquirer relays a question and the respondent responds accordingly via a “yes” or “no”. “Our interface uses electroencephalography (EEG) to detect specific patterns of brain activity from one participant (the “respondent”), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to deliver functionally-relevant information to the brain of a second participant (the “inquirer”)”.
The University of Washington has used this kind of brain-to-brain interference with a “mind control” experiment where a scientists “transmitted” his thoughts to a partner while they played a video game.
“They have to interpret something they’re seeing with their brains”, explains study researcher, Chantel Prat. The intensity of the burst of light, known as a phosphene, indicated whether the respondent’s answer was yes or no. This could be simply transferring information from teacher to student, but it also could involve transferring signals from a healthy brain to one that is developmentally impaired, or affected by a stroke.
“This is the most complex brain-to-brain experiment, I think, that’s been done to date in humans”, said lead author Andrea Stocco, an assistant professor of psychology and a researcher at UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. Meanwhile, their partner – “the inquirer” – was sitting in a room around 1.5 km away, and had a magnetic coil positioned around their head. Even though a majority of the real games were successful, the researchers contend verbal communication, most likely, would have been more efficient.
“We knew in theory it could work”. “The brain is trying to make sense of a signal that normally doesn’t exist”, Stocco said. “While the flashing lights are signals that we’re putting into the brain, those parts of the brain are doing a million other things at any given time too”, she said. Rajesh Rao, a computer-science professor, tried to transmit his brain signal to Stocco.
The use of felt signals through relay lines between two brains is something out of the ordinary.
The second player reported that he was visually interrupted or “saw” a flash of light when the answer was Yes.
Scientists could try and figure out a better way to transmit advanced forms of brain signals such as shapes.
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This is the first experiment to demonstrate that two brains can be linked up directly to allow one person to accurately guess what’s on the other’s mind, and it’s a pretty huge deal. “When the non-ADHD student is paying attention, the ADHD student’s brain gets put into a state of greater attention automatically”. It could help the student to focus more and overcome the disorder.
