MOSCOW, September 1 (RIA Novosti) - An international team of scientists has successfully sent a message to a colleague located almost 5,000 miles away using the power of mind in what researchers claim is the first nearly direct long-distance telepathic transmission, according to a study published in the PLOS One journal.
Mind-to-mind transmission is possible due to the fact that each thought sets off a chemical reaction that produces a different electrical signal in the brain. The signals can then be picked up by the electroencephalography (EEG) headsets, encoded, transmitted and deciphered.
During the first experiment, which took place on March 28, 2014, the world “hola”, meaning hello in Spanish, was transmitted. The message turned into a binary code was sent from Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the Kerala state, India, to Strasbourg, France, using noninvasive technologies and transplanted into the receivers brain. It appeared as a sequence of flashes in the corner of the person’s vision.
On April 7, researches repeated the experiment: an emitter from Spain sent the word “ciao”, which means hello or goodbye in Italian, to France. They managed to achieve reliable results reporting an error rate of 15 percent in the second experiment.
Researchers predicted that in the not-so-distant future people will be able to easily interact with computers and each other using mind-to-mind communication adding that it will have “broad social implications that will require new ethical and legislative responses”.
Scientist suggest their study could promote research in such areas as “non-invasive direct transmission of emotions and feelings or the possibility of sense synthesis in humans, that is, the direct interface of arbitrary sensors with the human brain using brain stimulation, as previously demonstrated in animals with invasive methods.”
The pioneering research differs from other brain-to-brain studies due to several factors: both the emitter and the receiver were humans, fully noninvasive technology was used and communication was conscious.
The technology that allows brain-to-brain communication was developed conjointly by the University of Barcelona and Starlab Barcelona in Spain, Axilum Robotics in France and Harvard Medical School.
Although, brain-to-brain communication is an unexplored field scientists have already conducted successful experiments that allowed people to move objects using nothing more than the power of the brain. For instance, EEG headsets, an essential part of the latest experiment, have already been used to mind control objects like toy helicopters, according to Newsweek.
In 2013, scientists from the University of Washington announced that they conducted an experiment that allowed one researcher to control hand motions of his colleague using strictly brain power. Earlier, in 2012, it was reported that a paralyzed woman managed to mind control a robotic arm to move objects and even feed herself, according to Reuters.
