Scientists from the University of Washington have proven it’s possible for people to communicate using only their brains. Specifically, they showed that a player of a shooter-style video game could trigger another player to fire a cannon just by thinking “fire.”
The study, “A Direct Brain-to-Brain Interface in Humans,” was published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.
The researchers had help from some fancy but non-invasive electronics. A “brain-to-brain interface” was created by attaching electrodes that recorded brain signals in one person and a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil that stimulated the brain of another. It was the first time humans have communicated using only their brains and this sort of computer setup.
Here’s how the experiment worked: Six people were paired up to play a video game in which they had to defend a city by firing a cannon and intercepting rockets launched from a pirate ship. One person, the sender, sat in front of a gaming console with an EEG device attached to her head. Just by thinking “fire,” she could make her partner a mile away press a touchpad to fire a cannon.
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