
Study shows brain interface between humans - UWNews
http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/11/05/uw-study-shows-direct-brain-interface-between-humans/
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dj-wonk
When I read "direct" I was not expecting head-mounted circuitry. This is
indeed interesting, but it is not brain-to-brain communication. It is [brain]
to [mesh] to [computer processing] to [mesh] to [brain] communication.
Awesome, yes, but not telepathy. :)

That said, it is a "direct brain interface" in that the mesh interfaces
directly with the brain.

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dang
Ok, we took "direct" out of the title.

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delbel
So it appears that the device communicates from a signal from what they call
is a "transcranial magnetic stimulation coil". But it also appears that the
people doing the experiment have knowledge of the intended outcome. Therefore,
I think that they are getting a simple headache and then firing the device.
The most simplest double blind test would be to take someone off the street
and see if they fire that as well. Apologize if they did this and I did not
catch that in link/video.

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Xcelerate
I wonder how arguments between people would change if you could _truly_
understand things from the other person's perspective. It would be interesting
to say the least.

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dj-wonk
Hold your horses :) We're talking about surface-level stimulation of neurons.
It is huge leap to go from that to inner-level communication. Even if the
physics were possible, what are the chances that the two people's neural
structures would be compatible enough for a direct connection? Each person's
memory at a particular region is almost certainly completely different. Would
it even make sense to try to map signals in that way?

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SnowProblem
Yep there's zero chance direct communication will "just work". But with
training, it seems possible. In the future primary schools will still teach
standard reading and writing, but they will also teach standard thinking as a
way to interface thoughts with computers in agreed-upon forms (words, voices,
and images). Standard thinking will be different than everyday thinking, but
it will still be as natural as speaking a thought.

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tokenadult
The press release kindly submitted here describes the experimental apparatus
and protocol in reasonable detail, but acknowledges, "Researchers found that
accuracy varied among the pairs, ranging from 25 to 83 percent." That means
the method still needs a lot of work. The lab has strong external funding, it
appears, and we should keep an eye on what further results it announces that
are examined by independent science journalists.

But this is a press release, so it will tend to have favorable spin to keep
the funding flowing. Many, many submissions to HN are based at bottom on press
releases, and press releases are well known for spinning preliminary research
findings beyond all recognition. This has been commented on in the PhD comic
"The Science News Cycle,"[1] which only exaggerates the process a very little.
Not all press releases spin their statements as badly as the worst examples,
but all of them should be compared to independent sources for a second
opinion.

The most sure and certain finding of any preliminary study will be that more
research is needed. All too often, preliminary findings don't lead to further
useful discoveries in science, because the preliminary findings are flawed.
The obligatory link for any discussion of a report on a research result like
the one kindly submitted here is the article "Warning Signs in Experimental
Design and Interpretation"[2] by Peter Norvig, director of research at Google,
on how to interpret scientific research. Check each news story you read for
how many of the important issues in interpreting research are NOT discussed in
the story.

[1] "The Science News Cycle"
[http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174)

[2] "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"
[http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html](http://norvig.com/experiment-
design.html)

AFTER EDIT: Feel free to let me know what you disagree about here (assuming
that an early downvote was made to indicate disagreement). I don't have a
direct brain-to-brain connection with anyone else on Hacker News, so I can't
always be sure what people mean by how they click on posts.

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devindotcom
They were expanding on preliminary research they did a year ago. The accuracy
problem was on the 'visualization' end apparently, not the
transfer/reproduction end. It's really not spun beyond recognition, just early
days for this type of research.

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jonatanheyman
In the video
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRsx5egJoYk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRsx5egJoYk))
at 1:22, when they demonstrate it, the receiver is pressing a keyboard and not
a touch pad like the speaker voice says earlier in the video.

The fact that they say "touch pad" made me believe that they actually were
able to transfer coordinates.

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sysk
I wonder if the receiving participants really felt "compelled" to move their
hand or if instead they learned to recognise the "fire" signal over time and
deliberately acted upon it. It could have felt like a more distinct buzz than
other random signals received in between two firings. Not sure if I'm making
sense...

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maplebed
Though there's no answer in the video, the classic demonstration of TMS
(Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) you'll find in an intro to brain imaging
class is to trigger sections of brain containing the motor neurons. This
creates involuntary movement in the muscles of your body, rather than any kind
of information you would process willfully act upon. Given the mention of
placing the TMS paddle on the opposite hemisphere of the brain from the
subject's arm, it's plausible that they are actually just aiming at the motor
neurons.

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torpmode
If the TMS causing a twitch is existing textbook knowledge, then are they
doing anything new at all? Reading some kind of signal from a trained person's
brain is also already commonplace.

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andy
The page is not found for me.

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ivancamilov
Same here... anyone got a mirror?

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dpe82
As usual, Google does:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/11/05/uw-
study-shows-direct-brain-interface-between-humans/)

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wildpeaks
Is it one-way or two-way ?

If one-way, the next interesting thing would be to record and playback the
signal.

Once we're able to record and playback, there are many possibilities because
it can also be transmitted anywhere and even to multiple receivers, thus
having a new medium of communication.

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segmondy
This means direct brain interface to computer which means the technology for
the matrix is here, albeit not yet solid, but hey, pretty cool. Once upon a
time, we had nothing but 4bit computers with 128bytes, and here we are today,
in about 40-50years.

~~~
dj-wonk
Possibly. But it seems to me to hinge upon whether surface-level signals can
convey the information of interest. How deep is the cortex and how far in can
we detect signals? What kind of resolution is practical or even possible in
theory? I would imagine the electromagnetics get fairly fuzzy fast, depending
on your time resolution.

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mwti
Interferometry in the RADAR bands allows you to penetrate the cranium and
reflect back the neuronal correlates of consciousness. These signals can be
decoded into your inner monologue and emotions.

This is the latest rave in Silicon Valley (which used to be called Microwave
Valley!). Well... not the latest, they've been working on it for decades. <:)

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ChuckMcM
ok, that is a bit creepy. Wondering when the bandwidth gets to the point where
you can send multivalued data.

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dj-wonk
Do you think bandwidth is a limiting factor here in practice? FiOS, for
example, has plans ranging from 25 to 75 M bits/sec.

My impression is that having a sensing apparatus to sense and process would be
more of a limiting factor. A skull sensor that detects, say 20K neurons, with
1 ms resolution would only use 20M bits/sec.

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mariusz79
With 20Mbits you would get only 1bit resolution, and since we're talking about
analog data that's not enough. If we went to 12bit ADC we would need
320Mbits/sec.

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dj-wonk
You make a good point about needing more bits of resolution, but that's only a
factor of ~10. I admit that I don't know the limits of the current sensors and
rest of the system, but my guess is that they are not at the point where they
are maxing out the bandwidth.

I expect that a full-bandwidth continuous surface-level brain scan would
exceed traditional bandwidth.

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coldtea
> _Sometimes, words just complicate things. What if our brains could
> communicate directly with each other, bypassing the need for language?_

In other words: why not let a future government implant directions and orders
directly to the citizenry?

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silverballs
crazy

