Researcher controls colleague’s motions in first human brain-to-brain interface

http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/08/27/researcher-controls-colleagues-motions-in-1st-human-brain-to-brain-interface/

by Shenglong • 13 years ago

88 27 13 years ago

If the detection accuracy can be improved, one can theoretically telepathically communicate with another using Morse code :) Also, since we have the ability to 'write' a low res image onto a person's retina, I can also communicate with that person by just typing on a keyboard. The receiver would see alphabets flashing in his mind.

btown• 13 years ago

Can you share the article about the 'writing' of a low res image onto the visual cortex?

oh_teh_meows3• 13 years ago

Ooops sorry! It's being designed, no clinical experiment yet. I should reword my original comment.

http://www.polymtl.ca/polystim/en/navigation/Prothesevisuell...

There had been experiments showing that visual cortex stimulation to generate imagery is possible:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1528-1157.1998....

swalsh2• 13 years ago

i'm sure the translation would be a very difficult problem, but the idea of transferring an image from one person to another telepathically is ground shattering in terms of impact. Take every day tasks when working with a team right now. I spend days writing documents solely for the purpose of communicating ideas from my own head to others. Still even with extensive documents with images, and text, miscommunication is not uncommon.

Even still, when I program I mostly have an "image" of the program in my head. Imagine if a computer knew me well enough to translate that "image" to actual code.

This kind of stuff is a LONG ways away... but it seems like the basic concepts are being proven, and its both exciting and scary. What it means to be human could be different in 2100. If this technology is expensive, and we still have capitalism, and there's still a large class of poor. The digital divide could turn that casim into the grand canon. I'm scared that the technology is coming faster than our capability to handle it socially.

oh_teh_meows3• 13 years ago

Writing image (onto retina) is quite feasible, it's reading that is a problem now. A while back there was an experiment conducted to 'read' image in a person's mind, but what they had really done was mapping a certain image/video clip to a certain expression of the brain's activity. It can't read arbitrary image yet.

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/

Correction: we can read arbitrary images, but so far only with cat's brain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLb9EIiSyG8

swalsh2• 13 years ago

Thought of another application. Let's say you're a teacher. One of the hardest parts of education today is relating a concept by using other concepts that are more familiar to students. Its a translation problem, but there's an unknown variable. The teacher (especially if they're talking to a large class) may not actively know how well or how correctly their students are understanding the topic.

Assuming that a system is good enough to commercialize, there's probably some AI tech that's gaining traction too. If you could use AI to analyze a students understanding, the computer could interactively forge the lesson. The result would be faster, more accurate learning.

Learning, in my opinion being one of the biggest barriers to progress, the pace of change would be incredible!

coldtea• 13 years ago

I'm sure the translation would be a very difficult problem, but the idea of transferring an image from one person to another telepathically is ground shattering in terms of impact. Take every day tasks when working with a team right now. I spend days writing documents solely for the purpose of communicating ideas from my own head to others.

Yes, forget about those uses. Judging from history, such a technology will more likely be used by our overlords to send us commands to obey...

tlarkworthy• 13 years ago

an extraordinarily gimmicky headline orientated experiment.

However, it is still genuinely cool despite that. Nowhere near a precision brain to brain interface that could be useful, but its the suggestion that one might be possible

and if people are twitchy about mobile phones radiating the brain, I doubt they will go for a TMS machine that focuses huge magnetic pulses into the brain. Pulses that are so strong the virtually unferrous bio matter still sheds electrons making your brain do unknown chemistry that makes your finger twitch slightly.

canistr• 13 years ago

I await the day we get a brain API that can read generic actions and perform the same actions (e.g. read when someone bends their index finger and equally force the bending of said finger)

bitwize• 13 years ago

Oh boy! Sense/NET here we come!

cheapsteak• 13 years ago

How to replicate this study in your living room:

Get a 'remote controlled cockroach' kit, a Star Wars Force Trainer, some wires to hook the force trainer's trigger to the cockroach kit's remote control, stick the receiver on your friend's head.

This seriously doesn't seem to have broken any new ground, only mashed together two existing technologies for a easily misinterpreted headline

WestCoastJustin• 13 years ago

doesn't seem to have broken any new ground, only mashed together two existing technologies

I'd argue that new inventions are created by mashing existing technologies, often emerging or bleeding edge, and creating something new. Henry Ford didn't invent the combustion engine, transmission, suspension, etc, but he did mash these things together into something new. What we are seeing in the video and research is something new and pretty exciting if you take it a couple steps further. Think about replaying these signals, building a play book, etc.

ps. If you have some time to kill, I would check out this video called, "Everything Is A Remix", which talks about this idea @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk

simonster• 13 years ago

Henry Ford is famous for creating a useful product that people wanted to buy. This is more of a parlor trick. It's sexy, but it's not going to help anyone do anything, nor does it incorporate any significant technical or scientific advances that could be useful to future brain-computer interface development. The authors seem to be aware that it has little scientific importance, since they published it on their website instead of in a scientific journal or on arXiv.

emiliobumachar• 13 years ago

I agree with your larger point, but the example is flawed. Ford did not invent the car, he "just" made it much cheaper by inventing the assembly line.

derleth• 13 years ago

To mash up a few other comments, the main thing Henry Ford invented was the business model of the original Ford Motor Company: Pay workers well (better than average for the time), have them do assembly line labor for six and a half days a week, absolutely standardize on a single product, and sell that product cheaply enough your own workers can afford it.

Cars were invented multiple times, including electric cars, before Ford showed up. Rifles were being made on assembly lines out of standard parts long before cars existed. Being a tyrannical jackass with a perfectionist streak, while perfected by Jobs, was certainly nothing new. Ford just mashed those together along with a framed picture of Hitler and it all worked.

ISL• 13 years ago

In my experience, the combination of two trivial mashups is an innovation.

Suppose you wanted to teach someone to roll a kayak. In my experience instructing the subject, perhaps a quarter of students can roll instantly once they "know how it feels". If one person can command another's body to do it, perhaps learning would be faster and more efficient.

This work is nifty. It's playful, but the applications may be vast.

If I can send involuntary motion, can I send you thoughts? Can I write as fast as I can think? Can I be forced to do something unwillingly? Time will tell.

bobbles• 13 years ago

How to be reassured I'm reading Hacker News.

1) See an interesting article.

2) Check the first comment to see how any interesting article can be struck down in a few lines

woodchuck64• 13 years ago

Substituting "human brain" for "cockroach antenna" seems rather groundbreaking, but I wonder if the FDA approves.

bhitov• 13 years ago

It is hard to get tone over the internet, but I hope you understand why your example is incredibly far removed from a device that meaningfully interprets EEG data and uses that data to stimulate the motor cortex with a TMS machine.

What do you consider breaking new ground? It was their goal to demonstrate the concept of human brain-to-brain interfacing. If it had not been done before, it seems to count as 'new'. What about the headline did you find misleading?

SideshowB0B• 13 years ago

I wouldn't put this beyond the possibility of an incredibly elaborate prank. This is about as trust worthy as a Las Vegas magician's act.

...and now, I will saw my assistant in half!

j2d3• 13 years ago

A powerful version of this is central to the plot of Gamer (2009).

iopq• 13 years ago

It's habbiding! What next, communicating via thoughts?

contingencies• 13 years ago

Strangely, I was literally just discussing the near-term inevitability of this with someone last night.

While an ever-more subjugated, time poor mass of humanity walls themselves in to ever smaller apartments in ever larger cities, stringing along their physical bodies through ever more artificial means, moving ever further from nature and sustainability, we see the rising tide of ever more immersive virtual experience: writing, phonographs, radio, television, computer games, three dimensional environments - now with depth - eye tracking, motion tracking, direct nervous system stimulation, even virtual emotion through the megacoroporate pharmacopia ("ever feel tired? hard to focus? unhappy? ask your doctor about...").

Humanity nears a fissure of potential future realities: constrain our engine of consumption, or face handing a once virtuous and verdant home planet down to succeeding generations as a biological desert demanding ever more artificial means of sustenance for an ever-smaller elite, clinging desperately to a bygone quality of life through the corporate-military force of dynastic capital.

Well, not quite so hyperbolic, but that was the gist: it'd be a shame if instead of dealing with the issues facing our planet we all just shut down and went virtual.

Researcher controls colleague’s motions in first human brain-to-brain interface

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