
BrainNet: A Multi-Person Brain-to-Brain Interface - jxy
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41895-7
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Nokinside
Nature Scientific Reports is open access mega journal with low selectivity for
articles. Mega journal publishing model is to accept articles if they are
technically sound and ignoring scientific importance

> Our results point the way to future brain-to-brain interfaces that enable
> cooperative problem solving by humans using a “social network” of connected
> brains.

When you read the procedure, it's underwhelming. Using EEG to extract one bit
of information is relatively easy. Using TMS to transfer one bit of
information is relatively easy. Connecting the two is trivial. Might be
demanding for a undergraduate project in medical physics but that's it.

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glup
My read also. This is a parlor trick at best.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
One thing you have to be careful in EEG studies that transmit single bits is
that EEG is very suspectible to muscle artifacts.

From:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK390358/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK390358/)

“

Physiological artifacts may include cardiac, pulse, respiratory, sweat,
glossokinetic, eye movement (blink, lateral rectus spikes from lateral eye
movement), and muscle and movement artifacts.

“

You may not actually reading the brain of the sender, but rather that the
sender moves their eyes or their jaws or gets excited and increases their
heart rate when transmitting the information.

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anonytrary
This 100%. There's just too much electromagnetic interference. EEG picks up
facial movements most of the time, and greatly attenuated large-scale neuron
oscillations _at best_. That's why neuroscientists studying brain
functionality put electrodes _in_ rodents rather than put EEG devices on them.
This gives them way higher-fidelity data.

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anonytrary
Follow up -- whatever people think of Elon Musk, he isn't wrong about this. If
humans ever reach a BCI future, it will have to be in vivo. The first step is
making intracranial BCIs safe, the next step is to make them useful. They have
much more promise than external BCIs, but until they're safe, people will
continue to doubt them.

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dekhn
From what I can tell, if this work is actually correct it is an extraordinary
accomplishment: we can both read and perceptibly write information in the
brain, and transmit it between individuals directly. I mean, sure we can do
that already by talking or waving hands or any number of other methods, but
this means that perception-coding is effectively a solved problem.

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marviel
I have not read the entirety of the detailed paper, so I cannot be sure that
my critique is bulletproof, but based on my cursory reading, the following
critique:

Unfortunately, because the information transmitted is a single bit, I'm
concerned that there are all kinds of ways this sort of system could amount to
"are they using this _very, very general_ part of their brain or not?"
transmission. On the receivers side the decoding could be accomplished _not_
by "feeling the thoughts" in the sense we would expect (i.e. the thoughts of
another person inside your head), but rather by having that single bit of
information felt by the electric stimulation of the skin of the scalp, etc.

Granted, they do say they introduced noise into the signal -- but again, if
the information is just one bit, and you're aware of exactly the information's
timing, etc, it makes decoding it a lot easier. (No "When does the signal
start?" problem)

I am long-term BCI/CBI Bullish, but I'm concerned this is less of a "new age"
moment, and more of a "clever headline" moment

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CodiePetersen
This is equivalent to sitting three people back to back and they can only tap
each other as a form of communication. Left hand for rotate left right hand
for rotate right. The Eeg is not amazing we know they can be used to estimate
intent and play games. Tms has a physical feeling to it and in this case a
visual phosphene cue. You haven't introduced thoughts magnetically you've
introduced a feeling.

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missosoup
Yes. This method will never scale up to meaningfully transmitting information
between individuals. I'm not sure why this was deemed worth funding when it's
a dead end and I'm sure the authors know that.

We are not going to get a useful BCI without sticking electrodes into people's
brains in the next few decades.

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carapace
Meanwhile... "Psychedelic Experiences Associated with a Novel Hypnosis
Procedure Mutual Hypnosis"

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/cttart/articles/april2013articles/P...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/cttart/articles/april2013articles/Psychedelic+Experiences+Associated+with+a+Novel+Hypnotic+Procedure,+Mutual+Hypnosis.pdf)

You don't need machinery to do this sort of thing: the brain already has great
I/O through the face and eyes.

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Twisell
Could it be a bullshit article to prove the point that they can end up in
Nature?

Just asking because some part looked really dubious, but I have no expertise
at all in this area so maybe it's fair.

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Nokinside
They are not publishing in The Nature.

Nature Scientific Reports is open access mega journal with low selectivity for
articles. Mega journal publishing model is to accept articles if they are
technically sound and ignoring scientific importance.

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buboard
This doesnt sound much different than having the subjects tap each other to
communicate, just done with fancy head mounted equipment. It could be useful
for completely paralyzed people to play games

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dang
A thread from last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18070116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18070116)

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dr_dshiv
Can this system do anything better than normal communication? (Which is also a
brain network, obviously, and just as "direct")

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pts_
It's more efficient.

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dr_dshiv
I'm assuming you're joking; if not, can you explain?

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a-dub
silly.

