Hasta La Gadget!

Telepathy, now that is certainly a kind of power that we would love to have. As a guy, I sometimes end up with this blank look on my face, wondering just what went wrong with my conversation with the missus. It is moments like those that I wished I could read her mind so that everything would end up hunky dory. No matter, at least it is an opportunity to make sure that things can be patched up, and that normally means a lovely evening dinner outside. A Stanford scientist has discovered a way to ‘eavesdrop’ on the human brain, but it does involve temporarily removing a part of a patient’s skull while inserting a packet of electrodes along the way.

Right now, this particular research is obviously still in its infancy, and the technolog has only been used experimentally on a trio of patients, but neurologists over at Stanford claim that they are officially able to eavesdrop on the human brain in real-life situations, and not clinical ones. Apart from that, the new method of recording brain activity would also pave the way for future devices to be able to read, and more frighteningly, manipulate the mind. Hopefully we will see such advancements in medical technology used for altruistic purposes and not to have it hijacked by some quarters with nefarious intentions.

Human Brain ‘Eavesdropped’ By Stanford Scientist original content from Ubergizmo.

Sure, we’ve seen rats control other rats, but that won’t give us a legion of mind-controlled creatures to unleash upon an innocent public, will it? Harvard Medical School may unwittingly assist with solving our (rather misguided) plight, as it just experimented with a system that lets a human mind trigger actions in a rat’s motor cortex. The test had sensor-equipped humans watch a screen that flashed in sync with their EEG brain patterns for visual stimulation; as soon their attention shifted to controlling the rat, they triggered an ultrasonic pulse that twitched the rodent’s tail. There’s a few problems with the implementation beyond the obvious lack of autonomy for the poor target creature, though. The rat’s anaesthetized state likely affected the results, and the system isn’t currently sophisticated enough to map specific thoughts to corresponding actions. The Harvard team is working to refine the technology, however, and there may be a day when we can satisfy our megalomania… or at least, put the Pied Piper on notice.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Via: New Scientist

Source: PLOS (PDF)

Telepathy isn’t real. You can’t read minds with nothing but the tools you were born with. But add a little bit of wiring and that starts to change. Scientists have now managed to get two lab rats to think in-sync with just a little augmentation. More »