Telepathy over the internet : As part of my collections on the Science of SF.

Originally shared by Lacerant Plainer

Telepathy over the internet : As part of my collections on the Science of SF. It's not as far-fetched as one would imagine. Only goes to show our brains are one of the biggest mysteries to us. In more ways than one.

Over the web : The ultimate way to speed up online communication would be to push towards direct brain-to-brain communication over the web. If brains were directly connected, there would be no more need for pesky typing – we could simply think of an idea and send it instantly to a friend, whether they are in the same room or half the world away. We’re not there yet, of course, but a recent study took a first step in that direction, claiming direct brain-to-brain communication over the internet between people thousands of miles from one another.

Still just a beginning : Using EEG, the research team first translated the greetings "hola" and "ciao" into binary code and then emailed the results from India to France. There a computer-brain interface transmitted the message to the receiver's brain through noninvasive brain stimulation. The subjects experienced this as phosphenes, flashes of light in their peripheral vision. The light appeared in numerical sequences that enabled the receiver to decode the information in the message, and while the subjects did not report feeling anything, they did correctly receive the greetings.

Caution : Of course, with this kind of power comes danger too. Anything sent over the internet can be hacked and tracked. The ability to send messages directly into a person’s brain is, to some, a terrifying concept. “It can potentially be some day used in a negative way – you could try to take control of [somebody’s] motor system,” says Ruffini. But he points out that researchers are a long way from being able to do anything even remotely so sophisticated.

Corina Marinescu has posted about this here : https://plus.google.com/+CorinaMarinescu/posts/EBGqEJze21K

References and Links

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0105225

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4138179/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140903105646.htm

http://io9.com/brain-to-brain-interfaces-and-the-science-of-telepathy-1690302834

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150106-the-first-brain-to-brain-emails

#sciencefiction #science