Mind Meld Rats---Mind melds' move from science fiction to science in rats: The scientists call it a "brain link," and it is the closest anyone has gotten to a real-life "mind meld": the thoughts of a rat romping around a lab in Brazil were captured by electronic sensors and sent via Internet to the brain of a rat in the United States.
The result: the second rat received the thoughts of the first, mimicking its behavior, researchers reported on Thursday in Scientific Reports, a journal of the Nature Publishing Group.
Adding to its science-fiction feel, the advance in direct brain-to-brain communication could lay the foundation for what Duke University Medical Center neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis, who led the research, calls an "organic computer" in which multiple brains are linked to solve problems solo brains can't.
If that sounds like an ethical minefield, several experts think so too, especially since Nicolelis is now working on brain-to-brain communication between monkeys.
"Having non-human primates communicate brain-to-brain raises all sorts of ethical concerns," said one neuroscientist, who studies how brains handle motor and sensory information, but who asked not to be named. "Reading about putting things in animals' brains and changing what they do, people rightly get nervous," envisioning battalions of animal soldiers - or even human soldiers - whose brains are remotely controlled by others.
That could make drone warfare seem as advanced as muskets.
Nicolelis's lab received $26 million from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for work on brain-machine interfaces, as this field is called.
The linked rat brains in the study built on 15 years of research in brain-machine interfaces. These interfaces take electrical signals generated from the brains of severely-paralyzed people and translate them into commands that move a mechanical arm, a computer cursor or even the patient's own arm.
Read more: http://in.news.yahoo.com/mind-melds-move-science-fiction-science-rats-140312612.html
The result: the second rat received the thoughts of the first, mimicking its behavior, researchers reported on Thursday in Scientific Reports, a journal of the Nature Publishing Group.
Adding to its science-fiction feel, the advance in direct brain-to-brain communication could lay the foundation for what Duke University Medical Center neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis, who led the research, calls an "organic computer" in which multiple brains are linked to solve problems solo brains can't.
If that sounds like an ethical minefield, several experts think so too, especially since Nicolelis is now working on brain-to-brain communication between monkeys.
"Having non-human primates communicate brain-to-brain raises all sorts of ethical concerns," said one neuroscientist, who studies how brains handle motor and sensory information, but who asked not to be named. "Reading about putting things in animals' brains and changing what they do, people rightly get nervous," envisioning battalions of animal soldiers - or even human soldiers - whose brains are remotely controlled by others.
That could make drone warfare seem as advanced as muskets.
Nicolelis's lab received $26 million from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for work on brain-machine interfaces, as this field is called.
The linked rat brains in the study built on 15 years of research in brain-machine interfaces. These interfaces take electrical signals generated from the brains of severely-paralyzed people and translate them into commands that move a mechanical arm, a computer cursor or even the patient's own arm.
Read more: http://in.news.yahoo.com/mind-melds-move-science-fiction-science-rats-140312612.html
