UW researchers link brains together

If you could eschew the telephone, and instead wear a cap that allowed you to share your thoughts with someone else, very far away, would you?

“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, in a press release.

Brain scientists at the University of Washington have used an old-fashioned parlour game in a novel way to prove that two people’s brains can be linked across the Internet – an experiment that sounds like it was ripped from the pages of a science-fiction novel.

The University of Washington has managed to establish a brain-to-brain connection between two people that allows one person to accurately predict what the other is thinking.

During the experiment, one participant – “the respondent” – was hooked up to an electroencephalography (EEG) cap, which recorded all their brain activity.

The first player then answers yes or no by focusing on one of two flashing LEDs, which sends a signal over the web to a magnetic coil behind the second player’s head. Each game consisted of eight objects, with three questions for each object that would solve the game if answered correctly. Depending on the answer, the respondent would concentrate on one of two LED lights in front of them.

However, only the yes answer creates a powerful enough response to stimulate the visual cortex, which allows the inquirer to see a light known as phosphine – which can appear as a blob, thin line or wave – and lets them know it is the correct answer. This method allows pairs of participants to play a question-answer game by transmitting brain signals over the internet.

KIRO 7’s Alison Grande is meeting with researchers at UW this afternoon and putting the story together for KIRO 7 News at 5:45 p.m. A plastic spacer that was not detectable was used for the control games and positioned between the inquirer’s head and the magnetic coil so as to block the TMS. “It uses unconscious experiences through signals that are experienced visually and it requires two people to collaborate”. The mind reading technology is made possible through the help of sophisticated technology, even if the participants are one mile apart to each other. That subject, or “respondent”, is shown a picture of an object.

Many precautions were taken to be sure the signals were traveling only from brain to brain through the BBI. Participants guessed the correct answer only 18 percent of the time in the control games. No flash of light meant no. From there, they could ask more questions before identifying what they thought the item was.

The team said that their research had limits but that they hope to continue these experiments in the future. “It’s not something they’ve ever seen before”. “When the non-ADHD student is paying attention, the ADHD student’s brain gets put into a state of greater attention automatically”.

“Evolution has spent a colossal amount of time to find ways for us and other animals to take information out of our brains and communicate it to other animals in the forms of behavior, speech, and so on”, Stocco said. “We can only communicate part of whatever our brain processes”, Stocco said. But it requires a translation.