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BrainNet architecture. Two participants ("Sender 1" and "Sender 2") each use a brain-computer interface (BCI) based on the EEG to transmit information about a collaborative task (here, a Tetris-type game) directly to the brain the third participant. ("Recipient"). The information from each sender is transmitted via the Internet to the receiver's brain via a brain-computer interface (CBI) based on the TMS. After consciously processing both sender entries, the receiver uses an EEG-based BCI to perform an action in the task. The senders see the result of this action on the task and have another opportunity to transmit to the receiver's brain new information that can rectify an incorrect choice in the first round. While our experiment used only two cycles, BrainNet allows an arbitrary number of interactions between senders and the recipient when they collaborate to solve a task. Credit: arXiv: 1809.08632 [cs.HC]
A team of researchers from the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon University developed what they call BrainNet, a system that allows three people to communicate with each other using only brainwaves . They wrote an article describing their system and how it worked and posted it on the arXiv pre-print server.
Previous research has shown that it is possible that two people collaborate to a limited extent using brainwaves to play a video game. In this new effort, researchers have expanded the idea of including a third person.
Two volunteers were equipped with electrodes on their scalp to detect brainwaves – standard electroencephalogram hardware and software were used to process the signals. A third volunteer was equipped with electrodes to read brain waves, but he also had devices placed near his head to perform transcranial magnetic stimulation. The first two volunteers were considered senders – they watched the same Tetris game as the third person, called the receiver, and gave clues using their minds. Previous research had shown that when a person looks at a flashing LED at 15 Hz, his brainwaves synchronize with it and start emitting at the same frequency. Similarly, if this person watches a blinking LED at 17 Hz, his brainwaves start transmitting at 17 Hz. This allowed the senders to speak binary to the recipient – rotate the object that was falling or do not not.
For its part, the recipient needed advice from shippers because his view of the game was partially blocked. He could not see the bottom half of the screen. By listening to the binary messages of the senders, he will know if he has to rotate an object that falls or not. Previous research had shown that when a subject received a magnetic pulse in the occipital lobe of the brain, he would see a flash of light. Thus, to "hear" a message from a sender, the recipient would see such flashes indicating when to rotate the block. Subsequently, shippers could provide more guidance based on changes in orientation to the object in the game.
The researchers suggest that there is no reason why BrainNet can not be expanded to include as many people as desired – they envision such networks being used to collaboratively solve problems using the internet.
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