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Duke University neuroscientists have linked the brains of three rhesus macaque monkeys together using a brain-to-brain interface:
The neural network created, which the researchers call a 'Brainet', lets the animals share both sensory and motor information with one another, enabling them to complete tasks via their collective thoughts. This means they could potentially outperform a regular brain, because they now have access to the resources of a hive mind.
"Essentially, we created a super-brain," Miguel Nicolelis, the lead author of the study, told Hannah Devlin at The Guardian. "A collective brain created from three monkey brains. Nobody has ever done that before."
In the monkeys experiment, the researchers wired together three rhesus macaque monkeys and implanted receptors in their motor and somatosensory cortices to capture and transmit the brain activity. Once connected, the three monkeys were able to control the movements of a virtual avatar's arm on a computer screen in front of them. Each monkey had control over only two dimensions of movement, requiring the concentration of at least two of the three animals to successfully move the arm.
A separate experiment linked four rat brains together. From the abstract:
Cortical neuronal activity was recorded and analyzed in real time, and then delivered to the somatosensory cortices of other animals that participated in the Brainet using intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). Using this approach, different Brainet architectures solved a number of useful computational problems, such as discrete classification, image processing, storage and retrieval of tactile information, and even weather forecasting. Brainets consistently performed at the same or higher levels than single rats in these tasks. Based on these findings, we propose that Brainets could be used to investigate animal social behaviors as well as a test bed for exploring the properties and potential applications of organic computers.
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2015, @01:31PM
And you thought being in the same room, on the same wired subnet, gave you great latency advantages.
In the near future, gamers will pay to have their heads sliced open and wired to play MMOHIRPGs, where the HI part stands for "highly invasive".
We thank our simian and rodent pioneers for the sacrifices they have made in bringing us nearer to goals of gaming nirvana.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2015, @04:19PM
sheesh c'mon this was ripe for borg references, skynet, save that for AI articles
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 11 2015, @04:22PM
Seems you replied to the wrong comment.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday July 11 2015, @09:53PM
Yes, direct brain connections is the obvious step for a more immersive experience.
While most gamers will be content to try it sometimes, a bunch of very sociopathic hardcore ones will want a permanent hookup.
After a while some of them will grow tired and try the illegal version, which maps aspects of the game to neural receptors of pain and pleasure.
Then the more hardcore illegal version will surface, with neuromagnetic interference to the gamer's state of mind: by interfering with memory and awareness state the player will not remember/know he is playing, so he will be totally immersed in the experience. An open ended MMORPG called "Life" will be the most popular title.
OH SORRY, I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED MY COMMENT HAD SPOILERS.
CTRL Z CTRL Z
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Sunday July 12 2015, @12:15AM
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120907/ [imdb.com]
eXistenZ. We have been shown the future......
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.