Have scientists taken the first steps towards creating an \u201corganic computer\u201d using real-life brain-to-brain interfaces?<\/p>\n
An article published in Scientific Reports<\/em><\/a> Thursday detailed the results of a research study which \u201cenabled a real-time transfer of behaviorally meaningful sensorimotor information between the brains of two rats\u201d located in two different countries, Brazil and the U.S.\u00a0 During the brain-to-brain interface (BTBI), one \u201cencoder rat\u201d located in a lab in Brazil performed \u201ctasks that required it to select from two choices of tactile or visual stimuli.\u201d\u00a0 Using electronic sensors attached to the encoder rat, \u201csamples of its cortical (brain) activity were transmitted to matching cortical areas of a \u2018decoder\u2019 rat\u2019 (located in the U.S.) using intracortical micro stimulation (ICMS).\u201d<\/p>\n What all of this means is that the scientists were able to link the brains of two rats and have them perform as one unit, basically creating \u201ca new central nervous system made of two brains,\u201d says lead researcher Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University.\u00a0 The results: a mind meld where the thoughts of one rat guided the other rat to mimic its behaviors.<\/p>\n But unlike a Star Trek Vulcan mind meld<\/a>, which used telepathy to link two individuals allowing them to \u201cbe of one mind\u201d and share thoughts, Nicolelis says \u201cthis system allows one rat to use the senses of another\u2026it\u2019s not telepathy.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the Borg.\u201d<\/p>\n So what are the implications of direct brain-to-brain communication?\u00a0 Nicolelis says it\u2019s \u201cthe first step towards constructing an organic computer that uses networks of linked animal brains to solve tasks.\u201d\u00a0 He believes the results show how BTBIs could be used to \u201cexchange, process, and store information,\u201d thus serving \u201cas the basis for studies of novel types of social interaction and for biological computing devices.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the \u201cnovel types of social interaction\u201d part that Nicolelis mentions that may be of concern, however.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t be too hard to imagine armies of animal or human soldiers all controlled by others.\u00a0 Interestingly, $26 million dollars in funding for Nicolelis\u2019s research comes from the Pentagon\u2019s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)<\/a> \u201cfor work on brain-machine interfaces.\u201d<\/p>\n While the idea of creating computing devices that can \u201cthink\u201d on their own is nothing new, the research is a step towards creating what the researchers call a \u201cbrain net,\u201d where animals\u2019 brains are linked together to create a network.\u00a0 Duke researchers are currently attempting \u201cto link four rats\u2019 brains,\u201d and Nicolelis is conducting research studies involving mind-to-mind communication between monkeys (nonhuman primates).<\/a> Will these experiments eventually lead to the creation of a human brain net?<\/p>\n According to the article by Reuters<\/a>, \u201cMind Melds Move from Science Fiction to Science in Rats,\u201d Nicolelis was quoted as saying, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t mind if, 100 years from now, people say two rats started human brain nets.\u201d\u00a0 Can someone say \u201ccheese?\u201d<\/p>\n So how close are researchers to achieving fully operational brain-machine interfaces?\u00a0 According to the Reuters article, Bioengineer Douglas Weber of Pittsburgh says that “It’s cool that the stimulus came from another brain rather than an electrical device, but many labs have shown that animals can detect electrical stimuli delivered to the brain. This paper simply shows that the animals can detect electrical stimuli…from another rat’s brain. There is nothing unexpected or surprising.”<\/p>\n