Researchers mixed in the minds of three people to play "Tetris" in a collaborative way

Why send a text message or call someone while you can simply convey your thoughts directly into their brains? This may seem like an episode of Black mirrorWe are not there yet, but scientists are able to present a simplified version of this document. They have recently done it for the first time with more than two people.

The brain-to-brain interface uses modern brain analysis tools to enable people to communicate, telepathically. In an article posted on the arXiv pre-print server last week, researchers at the University of Washington detailed a new example of this technology using three people for the first time, creating what they describe as a "social network" brain to brain.

The way participants can interact is very limited at this stage, but it shows the potential of this type of wordless communication for group decision making in the future.

Here's how it works: The researchers used groups of three people, two "senders" and a "receiver", all in separate rooms. The three participants are connected to an electroencephalogram (EEG) device, which records electrical activity in the brain. The "receiver" is also connected to a machine that provides transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which stimulates certain reactions in the brain using short pulses of targeted magnetic energy.

In the experience, the teams of three were tasked with playing some sort of ultra-simple game of Tetris. Both shippers could see the entire screen, while the receiver could only see the pieces as they fell, not the bottom where they would land. To win the game, both shippers must tell the recipient whether or not to rotate the piece so that it inserts into the slot:

This is where telepathy occurs: if the sender wanted the receiver to rotate the room, he would focus his eyes on the right side of the screen, where an LED light flashed at 15 Hz This generates brain waves at the same frequency, which the EEG would capture and transmit to the receiver's TMS. This signal would then cause the TMS to reveal a point of light in the receiver's field of view, which was the "block rotation" code. The receiver then had to interpret the signals of the two independent senders and decide what to do.

Screen that senders would use to decide which message to send to the recipient. Image: arXiv

Using this technique, groups of three were able to complete the Tetris puzzle with an average accuracy of 81.25 percent, according to the paper. It seems more accurate than if you were yelling your friend, "Turn it! Turn it! "On your shoulder at the arcade. This is despite the fact that, for some trials, researchers voluntarily intervene and force one of the senders to send the wrong instruction, so that the recipient must determine which sender is most often right and which one to play with.

This is not the first time researchers have been able to allow people to communicate in a brain-to-brain interface. Previous experiments have enabled researchers to create an "organic computer" by connecting four mouse brains, which shows that users can successfully complete a set of 20 questions via brain-brain transmission. thoughts.

"By using only the information provided by BrainNet, recipients can learn to differentiate the reliability of information transmitted to their brain by other topics and to choose the most credible sender," the document explains. "This makes the information exchange mediated by BrainNet similar to real social communication, bringing us closer to a" social network of brains "."