Then participants have the sensation that bright arcs or objects suddenly appear in front of their eyes.” Justin Abernethy, a research assistant, sets up the coil that will deliver the Senders’ responses directly psychology graduate student Theodros Haile’s brain. “We essentially ‘trick’ the neurons in the back of the brain to spread around the message that they have received signals from the eyes. This coil stimulates the part of the brain that translates signals from the eyes,” says coauthor Andrea Stocco, an assistant professor in the psychology department and the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. “To deliver the message to the Receiver, we used a cable that ends with a wand that looks like a tiny racket behind the Receiver’s head. The selections were then translated into a “Yes” or “No” answer that could be sent over the internet to the Receiver. Washington)Īs the Senders stared at the light for their corresponding selection, the cap picked up those signals, and the computer provided real-time feedback by displaying a cursor on the screen that moved toward their desired choice. Linxing Preston Jiang sets up Savannah Cassis as a Sender for this experiment. The lights’ different flashing patterns trigger unique types of activity in the brain, which the caps can pick up. The Senders wore electroencephalography caps that picked up electrical activity in their brains. “Once the Sender makes a decision about whether to rotate the block, they send ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the Receiver’s brain by concentrating on the corresponding light,” says first author Linxing Preston Jiang, a student in the Allen School’s combined bachelor’s/master’s degree program. Beneath the “No” option, an LED flashed 15 times a second. Beneath the “Yes” option, an LED flashed 17 times per second. The screen also showed the word “Yes” on one side and the word “No” on the other side. The Senders each could see the game displayed on a computer screen. For each group, all three participants were in different rooms and couldn’t see, hear, or speak to one another. The team asked five groups of participants to play 16 rounds of the game. (Credit: Jiang, et al./ Scientific Reports ) Bottom row: Success! The two screens after the Senders’ have changed the Receiver’s mind. The middle row shows when Senders have a chance to review the Receiver’s decision, and can suggest that the Receiver change their mind. The Senders (right panels) can see the green line at the bottom, but the Receiver can’t. Top row shows the screens at the beginning of the trial. A Receiver sees the panels on the left and two Senders see the panels on the right. Then the Receiver processes that information and sends a command-to rotate or not rotate the block-to the game directly from their brain, hopefully completing and clearing the line. The third person, the Receiver, can see only the block but can tell the game whether to rotate the block to successfully complete the line.Įach Sender decides whether the block needs to be rotated and then passes that information from their brain, through the internet, and to the brain of the Receiver. Two people, the Senders, can see both the block and the line but can’t control the game. That’s how we came up with the idea of BrainNet: where two people help a third person solve a task.” How to play the gameĪs in Tetris, the game shows a block at the top of the screen and a line that needs to be completed at the bottom. “We wanted to know if a group of people could collaborate using only their brains. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and a co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology at the University of Washington. “Humans are social beings who communicate with each other to cooperate and solve problems that none of us can solve on our own,” says corresponding author Rajesh Rao, a professor in the Paul G. This is the first demonstration of two things: a brain-to-brain network of more than two people, and a person being able to both receive and send information to others using only their brain. University Georgia Institute of TechnologyĪ new system called BrainNet lets three people play a Tetris-like game using a brain-to-brain interface.
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