Human brain control experiment successful
Playing video games can sometimes feel mindless -- just firing away at keys, staring at screen. But what if your movements were actually controlled by your co-workers' thoughts?
It sounds far out, but that's exactly what happened recently at the University of Washington. On August 12, computer science and engineering professor Rajesh Rao controlled the brain signaling of his colleague Andrea Stocco, who was sitting in an office on the opposite side of the campus.
To make it happen, Rao work a cap with electrodes hooked up to an electroencephalography (EEG) machine. The high-tech apparatus reads electric activity in the brain. It was hooked up to a computer that transmitted the data, via the Internet, to Stocco's computer.
Across campus, Stocco wore a purple swim cap attached to a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil. The coil attached to the swim cap just above Stocco's left motor cortex, the area of the brain that controls movement of the right hand. Stocco also wore noise-cancelling ear buds.
Once decked out in their brain communication caps, Rao looked at a video game on a computer screen. He imagined what he wanted to do with his finger, but was careful not to actually move his hand. His computer took in the information and transmitted it, via the Internet, to Stocco's computer, which then translated Rao's commands into a magnetic pulse that reached Stocco's cap.
Almost as soon as he thought about moving his index finger to the "fire" command key, Stocco -- who was not looking at a computer screen but had a keyboard in front of him -- moved his right index finger to the proper key. He later compared the feeling to a nervous tic.
The communication would work even if two people don't speak the language, because the brain signals are the same.
"It was both exciting and eerie to watch an imagined action from my brain get translated into actual action by another brain," Rao said in a statement. "This was basically a one-way flow of information from my brain to his. The next step is having a more equitable two-way conversation directly between the two brains."
The UW researchers are considering this the first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface. Earlier this year, researchers at Duke University showed similar results between lab rats in Brazil and North Carolina. A team at Harvard took it one step further by showing that humans can control rat's movements while they are sleeping: they had a human command the rat to wiggle its tail.
Rao emphasized that the process does not allow people to control each other's thoughts, or to control their movements against their will.
"I think some people will be unnerved by this because they will overestimate the technology," said Chantel Prat, a professor of psychology at UW who is also Stocco's research partner and wife. "There's no possible way the technology that we have could be used on a person unknowingly or without their willing participation."
Looking to the future, Stocco sees how the technology could help in emergency situations. If a flight attendant or passenger suddenly had to land an airplane, he said, this technology could allow someone on the ground to guide the person through the process.
