We are getting to the point that we can share primitive information.
It will be a little like the telegraph. Useful but terribly limited
in a world dominated by the internet. Before it gets useful we also
need to establish useful memory protocols. Like even accessing out
own memory and pre organizing it all. Besides, why bother when we
already can go it better with a smart phone.
And he is right, formed thoughts are roughly assembled and fussed
with before they are expressed. Thus sharing that process is
extremely counter productive.
What is useful is a direct link into the communication system in such
way that vital numbers can be continuously monitored. This type in
data gathering is plausible and potentially valuable.
Brains of rats
connected allowing them to share information via internet
Rats thousands of miles apart collaborate on simple tasks via the
internet using 'brain-to-brain interfaces'
Ian Sample, science
correspondent
guardian.co.uk
Thursday 28 February
201
A rat with a
brain-to-brain implant responds to a light (circled) by pressing a
lever. Its motor cortex was connected to that of another rat.
Photograph: Scientific Reports
Scientists have
connected the brains of a pair of animals and allowed them to share
sensory information in a major step towards what the researchers call
the world's first "organic computer".
The US team fitted two
rats with devices called brain-to-brain interfaces that let the
animals collaborate on simple tasks to earn rewards, such as a drink
of water.
In one radical
demonstration of the technology, the scientists used theinternet to
link the brains of two rats separated by thousands of miles, with one
in the researchers' lab at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina,
and the other in Natal, Brazil.
Led by Miguel
Nicolelis, a pioneer of devices that allow paralysed people to
control computers and robotic arms with their thoughts, the
researchers say their latest work may enable multiple brains to be
hooked up to share information.
"These
experiments showed that we have established a sophisticated, direct
communication linkage between brains," Nicolelis said in a
statement. "Basically, we are creating what I call an organic
computer."
The scientists first
demonstrated that rats can share, and act on, each other's sensory
information by electrically connecting their brains via tiny grids of
electrodes that reach into the motor cortex, the brain region that
processes movement.
The rats were trained
to press a lever when a light went on above it. When they performed
the task correctly, they got a drink of water. To test the animals'
ability to share brain information, they put the rats in two separate
compartments. Only one compartment had a light that came on above the
lever. When the rat pressed the lever, an electronic version of its
brain activity was sent directly to the other rat's brain. In trials,
the second rat responded correctly to the imported brain signals 70%
of the time by pressing the lever.
Remarkably, the
communication between the rats was two-way. If the receiving rat
failed at the task, the first rat was not rewarded with a drink, and
appeared to change its behaviour to make the task easier for its
partner. In further experiments, the rats collaborated in a task
that required them to distinguish between narrow and wide openings
using their whiskers.
In the final test, the
scientists connected rats on different continents and beamed their
brain activity back and forth over the internet. "Even though
the animals were on different continents, with the resulting noisy
transmission and signal delays, they could still communicate,"
said Miguel Pais-Vieira, the first author of the study, in a
statement. "This tells us that we could create a workable
network of animal brains distributed in many different locations."
Nicolelis said the
team is now working on ways to link several animals' brains at once
to solve more complex tasks. "We cannot even predict what kinds
of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as
part of a 'brain-net'," he said. "In theory, you could
imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that
individual brains cannot achieve by themselves."
The research is
published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Anders Sandberg, who
studies the ethics of neurotechnologies at the Future of Humanity
Institute at Oxford University, said the work was "very
important" in helping to understand how brains encode
information.
But the implications
of the technology and its potential future uses are far broader, said
Sandberg. "The main reason we are running the planet is that we
are amazingly good at communicating and coordinating. Without that,
although we are very smart animals, we would not dominate the
planet."
"I don't think
there's any risk of supersmart rats from this," he added.
"There's a big difference between sharing sensory information
and being able to plan. I'm not worried about an imminent invasion of
'rat multiborgs'."
Very little is
known about how thoughts are encoded and how they might be
transmitted into another person's brain – so that is not a
realistic prospect any time soon. And much of what is in our minds is
what Sandberg calls a "draft" of what we might do. "Often,
we don't want to reveal those drafts, that would be embarrassing and
confusing. And a lot of those drafts are changed before we act. Most
of the time I think we'd be very thankful not to be in someone else's
head."
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