FIRST BRAIN-TO-BRAIN INTERFACE ALLOWS TRANSMISSION OF TACTILE AND MOTOR INFORMATION BETWEEN RATS

A brain-to-brain interface (BTBI) enabled a real-time transfer of behaviorally meaningful sensorimotor information between the brains of two rats.

Two rats — one in North Carolina, the other in Brazil — worked together on a task by communicating telepathically, thanks to implants in their brain.

Electrical signals from a "leader" rat’s brain were collected, encoded and then zapped into the "follower" rat’s cortex in the form of an electrical signal. The follower rat then pressed one of two levers based on a light visible only to the leader rat. The Duke University experiment is the first time two animals have collaborated through such an artificial link, and shows that the mammal brain can be trained to act on electrical signals from another animal.

Miguel Nicolelis, the Duke neuroscientist who led the team from Duke and the International Institute for Neuroscience of Natal in Brazil, believes that information transfer could extend to other senses, too. “You could think about taste, vision — I don’t see any problem doing this,” he told NBC News.

Wiðercora wrote:I haven't read the article, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say - no they didn't.

Am I right, or is it actually worth reading?

Shrunk wrote:

Wiðercora wrote:I haven't read the article, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say - no they didn't.

Am I right, or is it actually worth reading?

You're right, they didn't. But it's still worth reading. It's an interesting experiment.

Wiðercora wrote:

Shrunk wrote:

Wiðercora wrote:I haven't read the article, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say - no they didn't.

Am I right, or is it actually worth reading?

You're right, they didn't. But it's still worth reading. It's an interesting experiment.

It was interesting. Certainly not telepathy, but headline writers do seem to regard factual accuracy as a mere inconvenience to be circumvented rather than a standard to attain.

Telepathy (from the ancient Greek τηλε, tele meaning "distant" and πάθη, pathe or patheia meaning "feeling, perception, passion, affliction, experience") is the transmission of information from one person to another without using any of our known sensory channels or physical interaction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepathy

Government mind control may not be as farfetched as it sounds: after 15 years of research, scientists have found a way to transmit information from one brain to another, thereby controlling the thoughts of its test subject.

Scientists have successfully captured the thoughts of a rat in Brazil and electronically transmitted them through the Internet to the brain of a rat in the US. The Brazilian rat had been energetically running around in a lab. When the American rat received the brain waves of its South American counterpart, it immediately began to mimic the behavior – despite the thousands of miles between them, Reuters reports.

Scientists refer to the technique as a “brain link”. The $26 million study of brain-machine interfaces was funded by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which ultimately hopes to have this technology available to humans.

By linking human brains together, scientists believe they can combine brainpower to solve problems that are too difficult for one person to handle alone, Duke University Medical Center neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis told Reuters. Nicolelis refers to this link as an “organic computer”, and said scientists will first test it out on monkeys to determine its feasibility.

the_5th_ape wrote:oops. Mods please merge this thread

Wiðercora wrote:O_o

Do you even read the articles before you post them?

Shrunk wrote:
Maybe there's someone name "The 6th Ape" somewhere who's wired to your brain and made you do it?

Onyx8 wrote:
All done.

By linking the brains of a human and a rat, scientists have now helped a man wiggle a rodent's tail using only the man's thoughts.

These new findings are the first case of a brain-to-brain interface between species, and the first example of a noninvasive brain-to-brain interface, researchers added.

the_5th_ape wrote:Man Wriggles Rat's Tail Using Only His Thoughts

By linking the brains of a human and a rat, scientists have now helped a man wiggle a rodent's tail using only the man's thoughts.

These new findings are the first case of a brain-to-brain interface between species, and the first example of a noninvasive brain-to-brain interface, researchers added.