Engineering telepathy

Brain-to-brain communication isn't a novel concept - we do it all time when we talk and listen to each other. However it would be a notable achievement if we could bypass our normal communication organs (e.g., mouth and ears) and instead directly communicate with each other via our thoughts.

A recent scientific paper describes a cooperative activity between two people involving direct brain-to-brain communication that occurs without using their normal sensory and speech organs. Instead, the first person imagines the physical action required to achieve a certain goal and, via brain signal monitoring, electronic transmission and brain stimulation, a physical action is produced in the second person to achieve the desired goal.

The way the experiment is set up is that two people, in buildings a mile apart, are playing a computer game that requires firing a cannon to shoot down an enemy rocket. The first person can see the game screen but they have no input device to fire the cannon. The second person cannot see the game screen, but they do have an input device to fire the cannon. The goal is for the first person to determine when the cannon needs to be fired, instruct the second person to fire the cannon and consequently destroy the enemy rocket. However the only available communication channel is via direct brain-to-brain communication.

The way the goal is achieved is that the first person imagines moving their hand up or down. Brain sensors on their scalp interpret their brain signals (via electroencephalography, or EEG) and move a cursor on the screen up or down accordingly. When the enemy rocket appears, the person causes the cursor to move up and over a button that represents the instruction to fire the cannon. This instruction is then transmitted via the internet to the second person's computer. When the instruction is received, the second person's brain is stimulated at a particular region (via transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS) that causes their hand to move up and then down onto a button which fires the cannon. If all goes according to plan, this action shoots down the enemy rocket.

That's the experiment and it works successfully. While this is a very nice end-to-end demonstration of where the technology is at now, the obvious improvement would be to have the first person just think the instruction to "fire now!" and have the instruction detected and automatically transmitted to the second person. Then the recipient's brain would be stimulated such that it generates the idea of "fire now!" in their minds and, finally, they act by pressing the button.

That would be a truly impressive demonstration of engineering telepathy. As Arthur C. Clarke once proposed, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."