[Igor Antunov]

Harvard creates brain-to-brain interface, allows humans to control other animals with thoughts alone

Researchers at Harvard University have created the first noninvasive brain-to-brain interface (BBI) between a human… and a rat. Simply by thinking the appropriate thought, the BBI allows the human to control the rat’s tail. This is one of the most important steps towards BBIs that allow for telepathic links between two or more humans — which is a good thing in the case of friends and family, but terrifying if you stop to think about the nefarious possibilities of a fascist dictatorship with mind control tech.

In recent years there have been huge advances in the field of brain-computer interfaces, where your thoughts are detected and “understood” by a sensor attached to a computer, but relatively little work has been done in the opposite direction (computer-brain interfaces). This is because it’s one thing for a computer to work out what a human is thinking (by asking or observing their actions), but another thing entirely to inject new thoughts into a human brain. To put it bluntly, we have almost no idea of how thoughts are encoded by neurons in the brain. For now, the best we can do is create a computer-brain interface that stimulates a region of the brain that’s known to create a certain reaction — such as the specific part of the motor cortex that’s in charge of your fingers. We don’t have the power to move your fingers in a specific way — that would require knowing the brain’s encoding scheme — but we can make them jerk around.

Rest of article: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1626 ... ghts-alone

This is relevant to my interests. Very relevant.

[U184]

This is in line with the first mind-controlled robot surrogate. They both are also reminiscent of the Avatar project done by DARPA decades ago.

This is relevant to my interests. Very relevant.

Is this interest personal, academic or just child like wonderment?

[Igor Antunov]

Academic/ideological.

[mikema63]

^ this plus child like wonderment.

[Potemkin]

This is relevant to my interests. Very relevant.

[youtube]rSCBvu_kijo[/youtube]

[Typhoon]

When I first saw the picture I thought, my god that is the largest rat I have ever seen! It must be at least the size of a dog, why are the rats in Cambridge so big? Then I realised it was two pictures...phew.

I dont actually this this is that big, we know we can detect specific responses in the brain but it is quite crude (why controlling the rat is done by thinking of a big circle by the looks of it). We know we can trigger a response in the brain using electrodes and if we aim them right we can localise that to a limb or tail or something. While the concept is big, the experiment does not live up to it (I would not even consider it control), all these things have been done before and it does not add that much as it does not demonstrate anything greater than before.

Keep trying guys.