The way that current research is progressing, our brains may
be closer than we ever thought… Ever wanted to know what someone else was
thinking? We may have found the answer to connecting human minds – not only
figuratively, but literally. Very literally.
Picture this: a scientific experiment, involving two rats.
The first rat pressed a lever, as it was trained to, anticipating the reward it
would receive for completing the task. An implant in this rat’s brain then
converted its neural activity into an electrical signal and beamed the impulse
to the second rat. The second rat then jumped forward to press the lever in its
own cage… but this rat had never been trained to ever press a lever. The
movement impulse it had to press the lever came not from its own mind, but
directly from the brain of the first rat, who was in fact thousands of miles
away.
What was created in 2012 by lead researcher Miguel Nicolelis
was “a new central nervous system made of two brains.” After successfully
connecting the brains of two rats, other labs were quick to pick up on the
research and one-up Nicolelis’s experiment. A team of researchers at Harvard
University engineered a brain-to-brain interface between a human and a rat in
the summer of 2013 that enabled the human to control the rat’s tail movements
by merely willing them to happen. Pretty crazy…
Then in August 2013 came the final leap that everyone had
been waiting for. Scientists Andrea Stocco and Rajesh Rao from the University
of Washington successfully created science’s first human-to-human
brain-to-brain interface. One person was strapped into a transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS) helmet, while the other was strapped into a non-invasive
electroencephalogram (EEG) helmet – the two researchers became successfully mind-melded in the name of all things
science.
The Experiment:
Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco, one strapped into each type of
helmet, were placed across campus from one another while watching the same
video game. Rao was wearing an EEG helmet, a non-invasive device that detects
the neuronal firing activity of millions of different neurons underneath the
skull. He was also in charge of the controls of the video game, but instead of
actually using his hand to hit the spacebar and fire on the video game, he
simply imagined moving his hand. Each time he made the conscious thought to
fire, an instantaneously fast computer converted the brain signals emitted by Rao’s
EEG helmet into a digital signal which was then beamed to a TMS helmet on
Stocco’s head. A transcranial magnetic stimulation helmet (also non-invasive)
electrically stimulates neurons in particular areas of the brain by creating a
small electric current. The helmet attached to Stocco’s head converted Rao’s
signals into bursts of magnetic stimulation that were delivered to the exact
region of Stocco’s motor cortex that controlled his right hand. The signal
would cause Stocco’s hand to involuntarily twitch, sometimes even scoring a hit
in the game.
Rao stated that the experience felt very different for both
of them. “For me, it was only ater the action had occurred that I had the
chance to reflect upon what had happened – that it was Stocco’s hand,
stimulated by my brain signal, that had caused the action. That realization was
both exciting and a bit eerie.” For Stocco, all that was really felt was an involuntary
muscle twitch that caused his hand to move and hit the keyboard. There was no
conscious “need” to flex the muscle, he said, because the entire sequence from
stimulation to movement happened within a few milliseconds. Moreover, Rao noted
about Stucco, “I don’t think he can resist the movement once he’s received the
stimulation, since it operates at the subconscious level.” Definitely pretty
eerie…
Test Hurdles:
Even with the level of connectivity that was reached at the
sub-conscious level, the process revealed that it wasn’t flawless or error-free
– and this exposed some interesting discoveries about how our brains process
information.
The EEG device used by Rao (which sent the outgoing brain
signals) uses technology dating all the way back to 1875. Although today’s
advancements in technology are obviously far greater than those of 150 years
ago, they still operate on the same basic principle. Electrodes are placed
across a person’s scalp that pick up frequencies oscillating within that person’s
brain. Because of this, EEG signals can’t pinpoint activity to a specific
3-dimensional point in the brain, but they are handy for tracking large-scale
brain impulses. TMS technology is much more recent – and much more
controversial as well. It works by disrupting activity deep within the brain by
using electrical signals, and some researchers have even reported seizures
being triggered as a side effect of TMS. However, most researchers today agree
that the risk is small, and many have succeeded in using this technology to
trigger movement, increase memory, and treat depression. Rao and Stocco also
both agreed to use these procedures because they were non-invasive, making this
technology the clear choice. “Andrea and I got really excited about the idea,
and we started brainstorming,” he said.
Leading up to the experiment, Rao had to go through quite a
bit of brain training in order to successfully execute the experiment. “EEG
signals are quite hard to use for controlling devices,” he explained, “because
the signal is a weak, noisy, filtered version of the underlying brain activity.”
Any extra movement of the eyes, face, or body—or even stray thoughts—could
interfere with the signals and give false readings. Rao had to learn, through
trial and error, how to control his EEG output more accurately by remaining
focused. Finally, in the last session, Rao and Stocco achieved nearly 100%
accuracy in the test.
What Now?
Now that scientists have created a full-blown mind-meld, what next? One of the
important things to note is that the experiment was built on technology that’s
rapidly becoming part of the consumer marketplace, as TMS and EEG devices are
becoming more readily available. And, even though this test only transmitted
movements from one mind to another, it is the hope of scientists that in the
future, we could (theoretically) learn to transfer perceptions, concepts,
emotions, and even thoughts. Then we would actually
be talking about a REAL mind-meld, allowing people to communicate directly through their brains. As long
as humans have been around, the need to communicate thoughts clearly and
understanding the minds of others has been an overwhelming desire – the fact
that we are this close by putting on little plastic helmets to watch what’s
happening inside our brains is both exciting and a little bit scary. Where do
you stand? Technologies like this might seem to have the potential to turn us
all into robots – or edge us towards a future of communication, understanding,
and human contact more intimate and direct than we’ve ever experienced. Where
do we draw the line between human connection and complete invasiveness? The
thin line is becoming a little bit eerie. Still, the effects of the mind-meld
are yet to be discovered…
via Discover Magazine, The Crux
No comments:
Post a Comment