In what might be the first documented case of technologically-assisted interspecies telepathy, an international team of researchers has successfully created a non-invasive brain-to-brain interface that allows humans to make a rat move involuntarily. The breakthrough could lead to more advanced techniques in which a person can control the parts of another person’s body with their thoughts.
This announcement comes only weeks after another team of scientists created an electronic link between the brains of two rats. But unlike that study, in which brain implants were inserted into a rat’s motor cortex, the new brain-to-computer interface (BCI) utilizes transcranial focused ultrasound (FUS) and electroencephalography (EEG) technology, which simply requires the wearing of external devices.
To make it work, Seung-Schik Yoo of Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues anaesthetized a rat and hooked it up to a device that could channel focused ultrasound directly (and noninvasively) to its motor cortex. Human volunteers were equipped with an EEG cap to collect and transmit signals. Then, by using a computer as an interface between the two, a fairly straightforward mind-to-mind link was established.
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