In a world first, Researchers at Duke University in North Carolina have given rats the Ability to communicate telepathically brain to brain using small wireless implents.
Miguel Nicolelis's team has, for the first time, demonstrated a direct interface between two brains ,finding the rats were able to share both motor and sensory information.
When one Rat was shown the LED indicating they shouldpull the lever, the other rat which was isolated from it correctly pulled the lever 75% of the time.
With successive trials, the rats actually became better at understanding each other, sending clearer signals using the telepathic link. "The encoder's brain activity became more precise. This could have happened because the animal enhanced its attention during the performance of the next trial after a decoder error." said Miguel.
In the second experiment, the implant was moved to the rats' primary somatosensory cortex, where touch sensations are processed. The rats were to enter a tunnel and determine whether the tunnel was narrow or wide by feeling it with their whiskers in order to earn a reward. Over 60% of the time, the receiving rat was able to correctly identify the width of the tunnel being explored only by the transmitting rat.
Finally, Transmitting rats were held still while their whiskers were stroked, The researchers observed patterns of activity in the somatosensory cortex of the decoder rats that matched that of the encoder rats, even though the whiskers of the decoder rats had not been touched.
In a repeat of the experiment, The same experiments were carried out on rats on separate continents, with one in Brazil and one in North carolina, coming to the same conclusion.
Very fascinating work.
Just consider the possibilities of such a system where you have many individual electrodes on each brain. This study used a single signal, but in theory the same technique could be used with higher numbers of contacts - modern Brain-machine interface electrode arrays in humans can tap into as many as 10,000 neurons at once - to allow more information, and more precise information to be shared between brains in the future. It very well might not be too long before Ghost in the Shell style Telepathy is possible in people.
Full article available at Nature: http://www.nature.co.../srep01319.html
"Part of the geth's success is due to their neural network. Effectively, they "share" their processing power, distributing low-level processes like motor control and visual identification to free up bandwidth for higher reasoning and complex thought. Geth can't share sensory data—they aren't a hive mind like the rachni—but in large groups they have more to think with. An individual geth has only a basic intelligence on par with animal instincts, but in groups they can reason, analyze situations, and make tactical decisions as well as any of the organic races"
-Mass Effect Wiki on Geth Neurology
source on this : http://www.fb.com/QuinSapientae
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It's really amazing how far we've come and how little attention science is given. I mean we learned to fly an airplane and broadcast a radio wave just a little over a century ago. Some people living now were alive at that time. Now, we've landed a robot on Mars, we've made teleportation (of small particles) a reality, and we've made telekinesis between animals actually happen.
A part of me is mad that this story isn't all over the news, but at the same time, a part of me is glad that society isn't reminded of how we treat lab rats. The last thing we need is for politicians to sign away laboratory rat testing because of its "cruelness" in a time where we're on the brink of curing cancer and AIDS.
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