Our story begins in California in the late 90s, where a group of scientists got a group
of cats to watch a movie.
The cats had electrodes attached to the visual areas of their brains.
The researchers saw how the cats experienced the outside world by hacking into and recording
what their brain cells were communicating.
With these bits of information they rebuilt images from the movies - as seen by the cats.
In this case, tree trunks, branches and a man’s face.
Understanding how our brains encode information - and how we can crack the code - could make
“super powers” like telepathy a reality.
While it seems like science fiction, telepathy or mind reading has a scientific name -
Brain-to-Brain Communication.
Technically it’s not directly brain to brain.
Between the thoughts of us humans (or cats) is a computer, a Brain Computer Interface.
It decodes our thoughts then communicates and encodes them into another brain.
In one study, people’s thoughts were able to control the movement of a rat’s tail.
A human participant and a rat’s brain were both connected to a brain computer interface.
When the participant thought about moving the rats’ tail, their intentions were captured
by the computer, converted into electrical pulses and delivered to the motor cortex of
the rat - and the tail flickered.
A recent study achieved Brain-to-Brain communication between humans for the first time.
A message was coded by the sender while an EEG recorded their brain’s electrical activity.
The message was emailed from India to France and delivered to the receivers brain using
magnetic stimulation and flashes of light.
All this for a message that was actually a one-word email: Hello.
It does show that brain-to-brain communication is possible.
Right now it just involves a computer, fancy apparatus and really slow transmission speeds.
It’s clunky compared to the elegant telepathy of Jedi knights.
Telepathy doesn’t quite exist as it does in Hollywood, but advances in technology are
bringing it closer to reality.
We still need a computer interface between our brains - not as cool as Star Wars.
If you could wear technology and communicate with a thought rather than using speech, text
messages or emoticons; would you? And what would you say?
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