{"id":11056,"date":"2013-02-28T11:23:57","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T19:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/?p=11056"},"modified":"2013-02-28T11:23:57","modified_gmt":"2013-02-28T19:23:57","slug":"brain-to-brain-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/28\/brain-to-brain-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"Brain-to-Brain Communication"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at Nature, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/intercontinental-mind-meld-unites-two-rats-1.12522#\/b1\">Ed Yong reports<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/srep\/2013\/130228\/srep01319\/full\/srep01319.html\">a new study<\/a> 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 &#8220;poor Hollywood science-fiction script.&#8221; To which the rest of us respond: we want to see that movie!<\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t my bailiwick, obviously, so check out Ed&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Direct mental communication won&#8217;t be replacing email any time soon. But unlike our skeptical commentator, I think experiments like this are important. They prod people&#8217;s minds in the direction of thinking about what might someday be possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11056"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11059,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11056\/revisions\/11059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}