#27TheDominator Posted July 31, 2013 Share Posted July 31, 2013 Will rise again with true coordinated leadership! http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/162678-harvard-creates-brain-to-brain-interface-allows-humans-to-control-other-animals-with-thoughts-alone Harvard creates brain-to-brain interface, allows humans to control other animals with thoughts alone By Sebastian Anthony on July 31, 2013 at 7:45 am 3 Comments Share This article 7inShare Researchers at Harvard University have created the first noninvasive brain-to-brain interface (BBI) between a human… and a rat. Simply by thinking the appropriate thought, the BBI allows the human to control the rat’s tail. This is one of the most important steps towards BBIs that allow for telepathic links between two or more humans — which is a good thing in the case of friends and family, but terrifying if you stop to think about the nefarious possibilities of a fascist dictatorship with mind control tech. Advertisement In recent years there have been huge advances in the field of brain-computer interfaces, where your thoughts are detected and “understood” by a sensor attached to a computer, but relatively little work has been done in the opposite direction (computer-brain interfaces). This is because it’s one thing for a computer to work out what a human is thinking (by asking or observing their actions), but another thing entirely to inject new thoughts into a human brain. To put it bluntly, we have almost no idea of how thoughts are encoded by neurons in the brain. For now, the best we can do is create a computer-brain interface that stimulates a region of the brain that’s known to create a certain reaction — such as the specific part of the motor cortex that’s in charge of your fingers. We don’t have the power to move your fingers in a specific way — that would require knowing the brain’s encoding scheme — but we can make them jerk around. Which brings us neatly onto Harvard’s human-mouse brain-to-brain interface. The human wears a run-of-the-mill EEG-based BCI, while the mouse is equipped with a focused ultrasound (FUS) computer-brain interface (CBI). FUS is a relatively new technology that allows the researchers to excite a very specific region of neurons in the rat’s brain using an ultrasound signal. The main advantage of FUS is that, unlike most brain-stimulation techniques, such as DBS, it isn’t invasive. For now it looks like the FUS equipment is fairly bulky, but future versions might be small enough for use in everyday human CBIs. (See: Real-life Avatar: The first mind-controlled robot surrogate.) With the EEG equipped, the BCI detects whenever the human looks at a specific pattern on a computer screen. The BCI then fires off a command to rat’s CBI, which causes ultrasound to be beamed into the region of the rat’s motor cortex that deals with tail movement. As you can see in the video above, this causes the rat’s tail to move. The researchers report that the human BCI has an accuracy of 94%, and that it generally takes around 1.5 seconds for the entire process — from the human deciding to look at the screen, through to the movement of the rat’s tail. In theory, the human could trigger a rodent tail-wag by simply thinking about it, rather than having to look at a specific pattern — but presumably, for the sake of this experiment, the researchers wanted to focus on the FUS CBI, rather than the BCI. Moving forward, the researchers now need to work on the transmitting of more complex ideas, such as hunger or sexual arousal, from human to rat. At some point, they’ll also have to put the FUS CBI on a human, to see if thoughts can be transferred in the opposite direction. Finally, we’ll need to combine an EEG and FUS into a single unit, to allow for bidirectional sharing of thoughts and ideas. Human-to-human telepathy is the most obvious use, but what if the same bidirectional technology also allows us to really communicate with animals, such as dogs? There would be huge ethical concerns, of course, especially if a dictatorial tyrant uses the tech to control our thoughts — but the same can be said of almost every futuristic, transhumanist technology. Now read: Hackers backdoor the human brain, successfully extract sensitive data Research paper: doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0060410 - ”Non-Invasive Brain-to-Brain Interface (BBI): Establishing Functional Links between Two Brains” (Open-access) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelticwizard Posted July 31, 2013 Share Posted July 31, 2013 Simply by thinking the appropriate thought, the BBI allows the human to control the rat’s tail. What the article fails to report is that immediately after doing this, the human drove down to the supermarket and bought 10 pounds of cheese. Apparently it works both ways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackout Posted July 31, 2013 Share Posted July 31, 2013 so this is how the new world order will begin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panzer Division Marduk Posted July 31, 2013 Share Posted July 31, 2013 And if you use those plague infected squirrels, what can stop you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larz Posted July 31, 2013 Share Posted July 31, 2013 so there is hope for sanchez eventually reading a defense ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelticwizard Posted July 31, 2013 Share Posted July 31, 2013 Why limit yourself to a ground army? If you can command rats and squirrels, why not include a whole air force of pigeons that can fly overhead in formation and crap all over the target? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeC36 Posted July 31, 2013 Share Posted July 31, 2013 Ive been doing this for years. Talking to animals and controlling them is an acquired skill, you cant fake it with electronics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelticwizard Posted August 1, 2013 Share Posted August 1, 2013 Every army, even a squirrel army, needs diversity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryK Posted August 1, 2013 Share Posted August 1, 2013 Will Boris and Natasha succeed in their evil plan? Will Bullwinkle find their laboratory in time to rescue Rocky? Tune in next time to find out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green DNA Posted August 1, 2013 Share Posted August 1, 2013 This has the potential to dramatically alter the dating landscape as we now know it. The dinner and a movie "warm up" will be history. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panzer Division Marduk Posted August 1, 2013 Share Posted August 1, 2013 so there is hope for sanchez eventually reading a defense ? Sure. But you just know if the Jets decide to try it, within 10 minutes, Beliprick will have hacked their system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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