Brain-to-Brain Communications

I came across this and thought we might be able to discuss it here.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-demonstrate-direct-brain-to-brain-communication-in-humans/
Scientists Demonstrate Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication in Humans

"In a new study, technology replaces language as a means of communicating by directly linking the activity of human brains. Electrical activity from the brains of a pair of human subjects was transmitted to the brain of a third individual in the form of magnetic signals, which conveyed an instruction to perform a task in a particular manner. This study opens the door to extraordinary new means of human collaboration while, at the same time, blurring fundamental notions about individual identity and autonomy in disconcerting ways."

The study referenced is: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41895-7)
BrainNet: A Multi-Person Brain-to-Brain Interface for Direct Collaboration Between Brains

"We present BrainNet which, to our knowledge, is the first multi-person non-invasive direct brain-to-brain interface for collaborative problem solving. The interface combines electroencephalography (EEG) to record brain signals and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to deliver information noninvasively to the brain. The interface allows three human subjects to collaborate and solve a task using direct brain-to-brain communication. Two of the three subjects are designated as “Senders” whose brain signals are decoded using real-time EEG data analysis. The decoding process extracts each Sender’s decision about whether to rotate a block in a Tetris-like game before it is dropped to fill a line. The Senders’ decisions are transmitted via the Internet to the brain of a third subject, the “Receiver,” who cannot see the game screen. The Senders’ decisions are delivered to the Receiver’s brain via magnetic stimulation of the occipital cortex. The Receiver integrates the information received from the two Senders and uses an EEG interface to make a decision about either turning the block or keeping it in the same orientation. A second round of the game provides an additional chance for the Senders to evaluate the Receiver’s decision and send feedback to the Receiver’s brain, and for the Receiver to rectify a possible incorrect decision made in the first round. We evaluated the performance of BrainNet in terms of (1) Group-level performance during the game, (2) True/False positive rates of subjects’ decisions, and (3) Mutual information between subjects. Five groups, each with three human subjects, successfully used BrainNet to perform the collaborative task, with an average accuracy of 81.25%. Furthermore, by varying the information reliability of the Senders by artificially injecting noise into one Sender’s signal, we investigated how the Receiver learns to integrate noisy signals in order to make a correct decision. We found that like conventional social networks, BrainNet allows Receivers to learn to trust the Sender who is more reliable, in this case, based solely on the information transmitted directly to their brains. Our results point the way to future brain-to-brain interfaces that enable cooperative problem solving by humans using a “social network” of connected brains."

Personally I have mixed feelings about this , in one way it can help people with handicaps who can't speak or people who had an accident that made it harder for them to speak with this technology it will help them which is a good thing but on the other hand the most private thing we have is our personal thoughts and with this technology our thoughts can be known and even hacked in a way which is bad . So if there is a safeguard against this technology being hacked then I am for it . But sadly major companies can use this and even bribe the makers for sensitive data like our personal thoughts to advertise , send us spam , get personal information like bank accounts , social security numbers , and even know if you hid treasure anywhere . Also data taken by this could be used in a criminal case basically demeaning the 5th amendment .

One step closer to the Matrix

I have a feeling my cat is trying to use this all the time and then meows in aggravation when I don't get the direct brain-to-brain communication that she's hungry.

Please forgive the thread Necro, but this item caught my eye today and seems pertinent.

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have developed a nanoscale particle that converts the brain’s electrical impulses to infrared light, optical signals that can be picked up by sensors outside the body that don’t require a hardwired connection that passes through the skull, and also could improve the response time of devices that would be controlled by this new brain-machine interface.

Called Neurophotonic Solution-dispersible Wireless Activity Reporter for Massively Multiplexed Measurements (or Neuro-SWARM3, for short), these particles are extremely tiny, consisting of a silicon oxide core only 63 billionths of a meter wide supporting an electrochromically active layer that converts the minute electrical impulses of individual neurons into near-infrared light, tuned to a specific wavelength that human tissue is transparent to. The particles also have a 5 nanometer coating of gold, a metal that can safely be used in the body, allowing them to enter the neurons themselves, to prevent being shed away in the cranial or cerebral spinal fluid.

“NeuroSWARM3 can convert thoughts (brain signals) to remotely measurable signals for high precision brain-machine interfacing,” according to study co-author Ahmet Ali Yanik, an engineer with UCSC’s Jack Baskin School of Engineering. “It will enable people suffering from physical disabilities to effectively interact with external world and control wearable exoskeleton technology to overcome limitations of the body. It could also pick up early signatures of neural diseases.”

This system has a number of advantages over more traditional electrical interfaces, such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink—a complex interface that requires electrical wires to physically connect the implants to external computers—and since it can be injected via the bloodstream it doesn’t require surgery to be applied to the subject. Electrical transmissions also have bandwidth limitations, limiting the speed of the system’s data transfer; Neuro-SWARM3’s use of infrared light to transmit the brain’s impulses allows for a substantially faster response time, meaning devices being controlled by an individual using such a system will be more responsive to the user’s input.

NeuroSWARM3’s in vitro (test tube) prototypes proved to be very sensitive to minute electrical fields, similar to the 70 millivolts found in an individual neuron, exhibiting a signal-to-noise ratio of 1,000 to 1, a sensitivity sufficient to pick up on the faint electrical signal generated when a single brain cell fires. The resulting signal was apparently four orders of magnitude more sensitive than traditional electrical interfaces, and ten times stronger than quantum dot-based technologies that are being explored.

Although they would provide a stronger signal than electrical-based links, Neuro-SWARM3 would still require sensitive IR sensors to be placed close to the scalp to pick up on the system’s transmissions. Machine learning programs would then be trained to decode the user’s unique brain patterns, and then send the commands to the device being controlled.

“We are just at the beginning stages of this novel technology, but I think we have a good foundation to build on,” said Yanik. “Our next goal is to start experiments in animals.”

https://www.osa.org/en-us/about_osa/newsroom/news_releases/2021/tiny_injectable_sensors_could_monitor_brain_activi/

It may make this concept wireless

https://www.theverge.com/2013/2/28/4040134/scientists-link-rat-brains-together-over-the-internet

These are of course baby steps, but refined to a high degree, it may be possible to bypass the hippocampus and start to store our memory's in the cloud, on the artificial brainframe so to speak.

It could even lead to a part of the population becoming post biological. This video is meant to be fun, but the concept behind it is worth thinking about imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E

It might redefine life and death when digitized minds can interact with both the uploaded, and those yet to transition from the biological substrate.



(WoodfordJedi says to himself " i have a very bad feeling about this" and hides under the Persian rug, hoping no one notices his obvious bulge)