There is an old saying that humans get to only use 10% to 20% of their brains. When tapped properly, it can take people to new heights. It appears researchers have started getting closer to tapping the human brain potential with the first brain-to-brain communication experiment, multiple reports have said.
The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has released a press announcement, which revealed that an international team of researchers from the said Harvard Medical School's teaching affiliate in Barcelona, Spain and from Axilum Robotics in Strasbourg, France have succeeded in achieving the first brain-to-brain communication between two people 5,000 miles apart.
"In a first-of-its-kind study, an international team of neuroscientists and robotics engineers have demonstrated the ability of direct brain-to-brain communication in humans. Recently published in "PLOS ONE" the highly nove findings describe the successfu transmission of information via the internet between the intact scalps of two human subjects - located 5,000 miles apart," part of the press release read.
The Daily Digest News report that the researchers wanted to use existing technology to achieve brain-to-brain communication. "One such pathway is, of course, the internet, so our question became, 'could we develop an experiment that would bypass the talking or typing part of internet and establish direct brain-to-brain communicatino between subjects located far away from each other in India and France?'" said co-author Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PHD. Pascual-Leone is the Director of the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at BIDMC, and is also a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.
The researchers - Pascual-Leone, his co-authors Carles Grau and Giulio Ruffini, and a research team from Starlab Barcelona - were able to do this by using a brain-computer interface that translates human brain signals to binary code. They also used light signals along with the binary code to transmit the message from one human brain to another. The technology is already existing: an internet-linked electroencephalogram (EEG) and a robot-assisted and image-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) technologies.
CNET said that similar tests have been done before, but with a computer at the receiving end of the experiment. Previous experiments have shown promising results in computers interpreting the brain signals and sending commands to robotic limbs or drones, which could be medically helpful especially for amputees.
The success of this new experiment, however, has more implications on the future of human communication and interrelation, especially using technology. The research team's conclusion read, "We anticipate that computers in the not-so-distant future will interact directly with the human brain in a fluent manner, supporting both computer- and brain-to-brain communication routinely."
Join the Conversation