Tag Archives: telepathy

Tom DeLonge needs your help funding his next UFO obsession

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Former Blink-182 singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge is taking his fascination with/conspiracy theories about UFOs to their logical conclusion point: He's partnering with former government officials on a public benefit corporation studying "exotic techn...

Harvard lets human minds control rats, private rodent armies remain distant (video)

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Harvard links human and rat minds, Pied Piper no longer required

Sure, we've seen rats control other rats, but that won't give us a legion of mind-controlled creatures to unleash upon an innocent public, will it? Harvard Medical School may unwittingly assist with solving our (rather misguided) plight, as it just experimented with a system that lets a human mind trigger actions in a rat's motor cortex. The test had sensor-equipped humans watch a screen that flashed in sync with their EEG brain patterns for visual stimulation; as soon their attention shifted to controlling the rat, they triggered an ultrasonic pulse that twitched the rodent's tail. There's a few problems with the implementation beyond the obvious lack of autonomy for the poor target creature, though. The rat's anaesthetized state likely affected the results, and the system isn't currently sophisticated enough to map specific thoughts to corresponding actions. The Harvard team is working to refine the technology, however, and there may be a day when we can satisfy our megalomania... or at least, put the Pied Piper on notice.

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Via: New Scientist

Source: PLOS (PDF)

Duke melds two rats’ minds through the internet, Spock may not approve

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Duke University melds two rats' thoughts over the internet we're not sure Spock would approve

Some would say the internet already lets us share every minute detail of our thoughts, much to our followers' dismay. Duke University isn't deterred by our behavior -- if anything, it just took oversharing literally by connecting two rats' minds in an experiment, first in a lab and ultimately online. Electrodes attached to the brain of a host "encoder" rat in Brazil processed the motor-oriented mental activity for a desired behavior, such as pressing a lever on cue, and converted it into a signal that was then received by a "decoder" rat as far away as Duke's US campus. The majority of the time, the decoder rat performed the same action as the encoder. Researchers also found that rewarding the encoder alongside the decoder created a virtuous loop, as treating the first rat for a job well done focused its attention and improved the signal strength.

We're not sure that Vulcans would endorse this kind of mind meld, though: apart from immediately depriving the decoder rat of self-control, prolonged testing led to the same rodent developing additional sympathetic reactions to the encoder. There's also concerns that the test was too binary and didn't reflect the complexity of the whole brain. All the same, Duke's study is proof enough that we can export brainwaves in a meaningful way.

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Via: Discovery News

Source: Nature