Harvard researchers have devised a way to create a functioning link between the brain of a human and a lab rat that lets a thought from the human test subject cause the rat to move its own tail. The research is a major expansion to the field of brain-computer interface (BCI), translating thoughts through a computer to another brain.
The work, published earlier this year in the journal PLOS ONE, sees a human subject hooked up to a standard BCI unit using an EEG reader, a trick we’ve seen used to control everything from games of Pong to robots. On the other end of the equation is a rat connected to a computer-brain interface (CBI) which uses focused ultrasound (FUS) to stimulate part of the rat’s brain using ultrasound waves, a notably pleasant and non-invasive method of entering another creature’s brain and hijacking its thoughts.
via Geekosystem
And after one minute, both the human and the rat said “God, I’m bored! Let me out of here!”