Over at Nature, Ed Yong reports on a new study by Miguel Pais-Vieira and collaborators, in which mental activity in the brain of a rat living in Brazil is communicated directly to the brain of a rat living in North Carolina, which responds accordingly (sometimes; at least greater than by chance). Ed was able to find another researcher to give the mandatory curmudgeonly response, comparing the work to a “poor Hollywood science-fiction script.” To which the rest of us respond: we want to see that movie!
This isn’t my bailiwick, obviously, so check out Ed’s article or the original paper. The basic idea is that the Brazil rat sees a light, and presses a lever that it has been trained to when that light goes on. An implant records activity in the rat’s motor cortex (in charge of pressing levers), which is then encoded and sent to the North Carolina rat, which presses the corresponding lever itself. At least, about 64% of the time. Which is a pretty noisy signal, but a signal nonetheless.
Direct mental communication won’t be replacing email any time soon. But unlike our skeptical commentator, I think experiments like this are important. They prod people’s minds in the direction of thinking about what might someday be possible.
Once again, Arthur C. Clarke got there way before the scientists, and more entertainingly too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Pending_%28Short_story_by_Arthur_Clarke%29
This is simply amazing. I’ve been wondering whether this was possible for years, thinking structural differences in individual brains would make the task almost impossible. I am very, very happy I was wrong.
Pretty interesting, especially because I have two cute, adorable albino rats! (Cucumber and Lobster say hello.) 😀
Michael Persinger took two groups of people and put them in two different rooms and exposed their brains to a rotating magnetic field. The purpose of the magnetic field was to create a “dynamic similarity” between the subjects. He then exposed one of the groups to flashing lights but found it also affected the brain patterns of the other group that was not exposed to the flashing lights.
No wires! No implants!
Persinger, M. A., Saroka, K. S., Lavallee, C. F., Booth, J.M., Hunter, M.D., Mulligan, B. P., Koren, S. A., Wu-H.P. and Gang, N. (2010). “Correlated cerebral events between physically and sensor isolated pairs of subjects exposed to yoked circumcerebral magnetic fields.” Neuroscience Letters, 486, 231-234.
The first experiments into creating the Borg!
Chris – I doubt “first”; at least one of our major political parties has been on to this general idea for decades, and it’s not “first”. James Cross is essentially suggesting that there are lots of ways to create the sense of common context, which alone could account for roughly equivalent behavior.
First, What could possibly go wrong with this idea? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Reading the previous reactions to this article makes me wonder if the mad scientist sterotype has a greater validity than I thought. I’m beginning to see why many people don’t trust scientists, and why that distrust is growing.
Why on earth would anyone want anyone else else going into their mind? If you think this is a great idea, maybe you should have your head examined, because it just might already be cracked.
Only those who have not thought about what they are asking for would want such a thing because if they had thought it through, they would realize that very soon their very thoughts they consider themselves will be open to a new level of rape never even remotely possible in the flesh. Science fiction is also well aquainted with speculation about “direct mental communication” and all the interesting (chinese sense of the word ‘kind of interesting’) things that would result. For griefs sake, look at all the idiots on their damn cell phones, ignoring whatever is around them for the sake of someone somewhere else they would rather babble at than pay attention to their own situation. You think more of this ‘networking’ would be a good thing? Hah.
We already have a form of telepathy, and thank heavens it can be shut down with a push of a button. What do you think will happen when that off button disappears? Be so very careful what you wish for, for you shall surely get it.
Where one can go with consent, one can also go without consent, and as history shows, the greatest justification for doing something hideously evil or wrong, is just having the power to do such a thing.
1. Christian T, read Kevin Kelly “what technology wants”. It is an error to consider human intent and imagination as the ultimate teleological cause of change in the universe. Automobiles changed the world, but brought good and bad effects with them. We humans are merely vehicles of a process of change that manifests itself as technological progress. We do not have the ultimate control of that process.
2. The rat experiment serves to prove that our brains are biochemical electronic integrators of incredible complexity. Think of the mathematics of complex adaptive systems and marvel at the reproducibility of that complexity in biological organisms born across the globe. What process serves to sustain its consistency?
3. Those who doubt the significance of a 64% effect either do not have children, or did not pay attention to their own behavior growing up.