Scientists discover new way of sharing thoughts by connecting brains

Scientists have discovered a way to connect people’s brain to each other and enable them to share thoughts along with working together to solve puzzles.

In a first, neuroscientists have created a three-way brain connection that lets people share their thought, which was demonstrated by playing a Tetris-style game. Due to this achievement, researchers now believe that a whole network of people could be connected with each other too.

As per Science Alert, the system has been named ‘BrainNet’ that works through a combination of electroencephalograms (EEGs) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Where the former one is used for recording electrical impulses indicating brain activity, in the latter one the neurons are stimulated via magnetic fields.

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In this ‘social network of brains’, the players communicated by staring at LEDs flashing at various rates, prompting their brains to emit electrical signals that can be picked up by sensors. The signals were measured by EEGs from the senders and transmitted to the receiver via TMS.

The scientists from the University of Washington set up a three-player Tetris-like game where one person wasn’t able to see the entire screen and had to rely on silent instruction sent through electrical brain signals. He was the receiver and was in charge of rotating the falling blocks.

The other two players, the senders, then gave him instructions by staring at LEDs flashing at either 17Hz, meaning ‘rotate’, or at 15Hz, meaning ‘do not rotate’. Later, the senders were shown the third player’s action and were asked to stare at the LEDs again to approve or reject the receiver’s decision, explained Daily Mail.

Few more tests were carried out where one sender’s signal was intentionally corrupted with irrelevant noise and the receiver had to judge which sender was more reliable. On average, 81% of the time, the players made correct move, far more than expected.

The researchers said, “The interface allows three human subjects to collaborate and solve a task using direct brain-to-brain communication. We found that Receivers are able to learn which Sender is more reliable based solely on the information transmitted to their brains.

“Our results raise the possibility of future brain-to-brain interfaces that enable cooperative problem solving by humans using a ‘social network’ of connected brains.”