Experts prove mind-to-mind communication is possible

Two individuals 5,000 miles apart were able to communicate without writing, speaking or otherwise mechanically messaging one another. The contact was done mind-to-mind in the first research study showing it is possible to non-invasively transmit a thought from one person to another even as far apart as 5,000 miles.

This isn’t about extrasensory ability, however. The breakthrough was engineered by an international team of neuroscientists and robotics engineers using various “neurotechnologies.” These neurotechnologies involved linking the brain activity of two people through a common media channel–the Internet.

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“One such pathway is, of course, the Internet, so our question became – could we develop an experiment that would bypass the talking or typing part of Internet and establish direct brain-to-brain communication between subjects located far away from each other in India and France?” explained Co-author Alvaro Pascual-Leone in a report by MNT.

After the end of the study, the answer to that question was a resounding “yes,” and it was all facilitated through the Internet using electroencephalogram (EEG) and robot-assisted and image-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Sound too complicated? The inner-workings of the process are rooted deep in physics, robotics and medical science, but the basic concept is not necessarily a new one. For years now, people with various handicaps have been able to communicate as computers translate the electrical impulses in their brains into words on a screen. In the new project, researchers took that technology but instead of having a computer be the final destination, another human’s brain was the target.

The person in one country would think of a word (like “hello”) and that message would be translated into the computers binary code, sent through the Internet, then translated back into an electrical signal in the other person’s brain. The messages were received, as described by the participants, as electrical flashes in their peripheral vision. Using the number of flashes, the message could be decoded the same way people use Morse Code.

The messages were not completely error-free, but over all the inaccuracy rate was only 15 percent at maximum.

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“This in itself is a remarkable step in human communication, but being able to do so across a distance of thousands of miles is a critically important proof-of-principle for the development of brain-to-brain communications,” stated Pascual-Leone.

What does this mean for the future? Experts are reluctant to speculate if the discovery will one day mean the elimination of electrical communication like email or texting, but they do indicate there are now more possibilities for individuals without the ability to speak or write, and one day language may not be a barrier in communication.