from Hacker News

Researcher controls colleague’s motions in first human brain-to-brain interface

by Shenglong on 8/27/13, 6:32 PM with 27 comments

  • by cheapsteak on 8/27/13, 7:38 PM

    How to replicate this study in your living room:

    Get a 'remote controlled cockroach' kit, a Star Wars Force Trainer, some wires to hook the force trainer's trigger to the cockroach kit's remote control, stick the receiver on your friend's head.

    This seriously doesn't seem to have broken any new ground, only mashed together two existing technologies for a easily misinterpreted headline

  • by tlarkworthy on 8/27/13, 7:26 PM

    an extraordinarily gimmicky headline orientated experiment.

    However, it is still genuinely cool despite that. Nowhere near a precision brain to brain interface that could be useful, but its the suggestion that one might be possible

    and if people are twitchy about mobile phones radiating the brain, I doubt they will go for a TMS machine that focuses huge magnetic pulses into the brain. Pulses that are so strong the virtually unferrous bio matter still sheds electrons making your brain do unknown chemistry that makes your finger twitch slightly.

  • by contingencies on 8/28/13, 8:09 AM

    Strangely, I was literally just discussing the near-term inevitability of this with someone last night.

    While an ever-more subjugated, time poor mass of humanity walls themselves in to ever smaller apartments in ever larger cities, stringing along their physical bodies through ever more artificial means, moving ever further from nature and sustainability, we see the rising tide of ever more immersive virtual experience: writing, phonographs, radio, television, computer games, three dimensional environments - now with depth - eye tracking, motion tracking, direct nervous system stimulation, even virtual emotion through the megacoroporate pharmacopia ("ever feel tired? hard to focus? unhappy? ask your doctor about...").

    Humanity nears a fissure of potential future realities: constrain our engine of consumption, or face handing a once virtuous and verdant home planet down to succeeding generations as a biological desert demanding ever more artificial means of sustenance for an ever-smaller elite, clinging desperately to a bygone quality of life through the corporate-military force of dynastic capital.

    Well, not quite so hyperbolic, but that was the gist: it'd be a shame if instead of dealing with the issues facing our planet we all just shut down and went virtual.

  • by oh_teh_meows on 8/27/13, 7:07 PM

    If the detection accuracy can be improved, one can theoretically telepathically communicate with another using Morse code :) Also, since we have the ability to 'write' a low res image onto a person's retina, I can also communicate with that person by just typing on a keyboard. The receiver would see alphabets flashing in his mind.

  • by canistr on 8/27/13, 7:27 PM

    I await the day we get a brain API that can read generic actions and perform the same actions (e.g. read when someone bends their index finger and equally force the bending of said finger)

  • by j2d3 on 8/27/13, 10:52 PM

    A powerful version of this is central to the plot of Gamer (2009).

  • by SideshowB0B on 8/27/13, 9:44 PM

    I wouldn't put this beyond the possibility of an incredibly elaborate prank. This is about as trust worthy as a Las Vegas magician's act.

    ...and now, I will saw my assistant in half!

  • by bitwize on 8/27/13, 7:37 PM

    Oh boy! Sense/NET here we come!

  • by iopq on 8/28/13, 4:30 AM

    It's habbiding! What next, communicating via thoughts?