A system that creates “brain to brain communication” has been developed by British scientists, it has been claimed.
The system, developed by a team at the University of Southampton, is said to be the first technology that would allow people to send thoughts, words and images directly to the minds of others, particularly people with a disability.
It has also been hailed as the future of the internet, which would provide a new way to communicate without the need for keyboards and telephones.
“This could be useful for those people who are locked into their bodies, who can’t speak, can’t even blink,” said the lead scientist Dr Christopher James.
The scientists claimed the research proved it could eventually be possible to create a system where people sent messages through their thoughts alone, although they conceded it was many years away.
Scientists used “brain-computer interfacing”, a technique that allows computers to analyse brain signals, that enabled them to send messages formed by a person’s brain signals though an internet connection to another person’s brain miles away.
According to Dr James, during transmission two people were connected to electrodes that measure activity in specific parts of the brain.
The first person generated a series of zeros and ones, where they imagined moving their left arm for zero and right arm for one.
After the first person’s computer recognises the binary thoughts, it sends them to the internet and then to the other person’s PC.
A lamp is then flashed at two different frequencies for one and zero, the Times reported.
The second person’s brain signals are analysed after staring at this lamp and the number sequence is picked up by a computer.
“It’s not telepathy,” Dr James told the paper.
“There’s no conscious thought forming in one person’s head and another conscious thought appearing in another person’s mind.
“The next experiments are to get that second person to be aware of the information that is being sent to them. For that, I need to get my thinking cap on, so to speak.”
