A year after reporting the first human-to-human brain interface, a team of researchers, led by an Indian-origin scientist at the University of Washington, has successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between multiple pairs of people as part of a more comprehensive study.
In the newly-published study involving six persons, the team, led by Professor Rajesh PN Rao was able to transmit signals from one person’s brain over the Internet and use them to control the hand motions of another person within a split second of sending the signal.
“The new study brings our brain-to-brain interfacing paradigm from an initial demonstration to something that is closer to a deliverable technology,” said co-author Andrea Stocco, a research assistant professor of psychology, adding: “Now we have replicated our methods and know that they can work reliably with walk-in participants.”
Rao, professor of computer science and engineering at UW, is the lead author of this work, which has been published in the November 5 issue of the journal, PlOS ONE.
“We believe that our results are noteworthy on at least three fronts. First, they show that current technology is sufficient to develop devices for rudimentary brain-to-brain information transmission in humans. Such devices (which have been long cherished by science fiction writers) have the potential to not only revolutionize how humans communicate and collaborate, but also open a new avenue for investigating brain function,” the authors wrote.
“Second, our results show that working BBIs (brain-to-brain interface) can be built out of non-invasive technologies. Because non-invasive technologies are currently simpler and safer for humans than invasive, surgically implanted devices, they have a potentially wider range of applicability, and could be used to develop BBIs in humans for a diverse array of tasks compared to animal BBIs,” they noted.
And, third, by demonstrating a proof-of-concept BBI in humans, the results are said to highlight the need to accelerate conversations between ethicists, neuroscientists, and regulatory agencies on the ethical, moral, and societal implications of BBIs in terms of future capabilities.
With a new $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, the UW research team proposes to take the work a step further in an attempt to decode and transmit more complex brain processes. It will expand the types of information that can be transferred from brain to brain, including more complex visual and psychological phenomena such as concepts, thoughts and rules.
The team is also exploring how to influence brain waves that correspond with alertness or sleepiness. “Eventually, for example, the brain of a sleepy airplane pilot dozing off at the controls could stimulate the copilot’s brain to become more alert,” a UW release said.
In the study, each of the three pairs of participants were located in separate buildings on the UW campus in Seattle, sitting about a half mile apart and were unable to interact with each other in any way – except for the link between their brains.
Each sender was in front of a computer game in which he or she had to defend a city by firing a cannon and intercepting rockets launched by a pirate ship. And, across the campus, each receiver sat wearing headphones in a dark room – with no ability to see the computer game – with the right hand positioned over the only touchpad that could actually fire the cannon.
If the brain-to-brain interface was successful, the receiver’s hand would twitch, pressing the touchpad and firing the cannon that was displayed on the sender’s computer screen across campus.
Researchers found that accuracy varied among the pairs, ranging from 25 to 83 percent. Misses mostly were due to a sender failing to accurately execute the thought to send the “fire” command. The researchers also were able to quantify the exact amount of information that was transferred between the two brains.