In a groundbreaking study, scientists led by Dr Giulio Ruffini of Starlab Barcelona, Spain, have successfully transmitted the words ‘hola’ and ‘ciao’ in a brain-to-brain transmission between two human subjects using Internet-linked electroencephalogram (EEG) and robot-assisted and image-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TNS) technologies.
Brain-to-brain communication system overview. On the left, the brain-computer interaction subsystem is shown schematically, including electrodes over the motor cortex and the EEG amplifier/transmitter wireless box in the cap. Motor imagery of the feet codes the bit value 0, of the hands codes bit value 1. On the right, the computer-brain interface system is illustrated, highlighting the role of coil orientation for encoding the two bit values. Communication between the brain-computer interaction and computer-brain interface system components is mediated by the Internet. Image credit: Grau C et al.
Previous studies on EEG-based brain-computer interaction have typically made use of communication between a human brain and computer.
In these studies, electrodes attached to a person’s scalp record electrical currents in the brain as a person realizes an action-thought, such as consciously thinking about moving the arm or leg. The computer then interprets that signal and translates it to a control output, such as a robot or wheelchair.
But in the new study, Dr Ruffini’s team added a second human brain on the other end of the system.
Four healthy participants, aged 28 to 50, participated in the study. One of the four subjects was assigned to the brain-computer interface branch and was the sender of the words; the other three were assigned to the computer-brain interface branch of the experiments and received the messages and had to understand them.
Using EEG, the scientists translated the words ‘hola’ and ‘ciao’ into binary code and then emailed the results from India to France.
There a computer-brain interface transmitted the message to the receiver’s brain through noninvasive brain stimulation.
The subjects experienced this as phosphenes, flashes of light in their peripheral vision.
The light appeared in numerical sequences that enabled the receiver to decode the information in the message, and while the subjects did not report feeling anything, they did correctly receive the words.
A second similar experiment was conducted between individuals in Spain and France, with the end result a total error rate of 15 %, 11 % on the decoding end and 5 % on the initial coding side.
“By using advanced precision neurotechnologies, we were able to directly and non-invasively transmit a thought from one person to another, without them having to speak or write,” said Prof Alvaro Pascual-Leone of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a team member and a co-author on a paper describing the results in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.
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Grau C et al. 2014. Conscious Brain-to-Brain Communication in Humans Using Non-Invasive Technologies. PLoS ONE 9 (8): e105225; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105225
