Brain To Brain Talk

Can we bypass traditional languagebased communication any time soon, wonders MUKUL SHARMAThe Society for Psychical Research is an organisation which was formed in England in 1882. Its stated purpose was to understand events and abilities commonly known as psychic or paranormal and it described itself as the “first society to conduct organised scholarly research into human experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models.” Its American counterpart began functioning two years later, founded by the great psychologist, William James.Thought TransferenceAmong the various phenomenon the two organisations were attempting to validate was the existence of telepathy — the supposed communication of thoughts or ideas by means other than the known senses, therefore the term ‘extrasensory perception’ or ESP. And we should remember that some of the best minds in modern science have at one time or another been presidents or members of these august bodies. But,alas,after some 135 years of research across the world, conclusive evidence for such thought transference like processes remain pretty much iffy at best. For one thing, most experiments cannot be replicated by others which is a must in science, therefore, leaving the community of mainstream scientists unimpressed.There simply is no proof they say. Zero, zilch, nothing, nada. As far as they’re concerned, the jury is not even out, it’s gone home. So is this the end of the road for telepathy and all its unfathomable ilk? Not really. Because while the grand old English and American societies have begun slowly sliding down a slippery slope to oblivion for some time now, those same mainstream science folks have, ironically, been busy replacing their long missed deeds. Only they call it “Brainto- Brain Transmission” now. For instance, according to a study published in 2014 in the journal PLOS ONE, using non-invasive means, researchers made brain recordings of a person in India thinking the words hola and ciao and then decoded and emailed the messages to France, where a machine converted the words into brain stimulation in another person.The recipient who perceived the signals as a sequence of light flashes was able to successfully interpret the greetings.In a second experiment, with volunteers in Spain and France, the same thing happened. The findings show it’s possible to transmit a thought (albeit a very basic one) from one person to another without requiring the transmitter to speak or write. “We believe these experiments represent an important first step in exploring the feasibility of complementing or bypassing traditional language- based or motor-based communication,” says Dr Alvaro Pascual-Leone, a neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and a professor at Harvard Medical School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ‘First step’ because these transferences were still taking a finite amount of time to complete the whole process, unlike pure telepathy which is supposed to be instantaneous. But apparently not for long. By 2016, a new computer programme could decode people’s thoughts almost in real time and researchers were able to predict what people were seeing based on the electrical signals coming from electrodes implanted in their brain within milliseconds.What’s left unsaid here is that the same information can similarly be uploaded into other implanted electrodes in other brains within milliseconds too. Now we’re really ‘talking’! Of course, the new results are being touted as one day having applications for helping people such as those who cannot speak or have trouble communicating by expressing their thoughts or are in locked-in comatose states with full paralysis but working consciousness.That may well be and it would be more than very welcome but what are the chances that normal people might also like to try their minds at it by communicating with one another? Yes, telepathy is still a no-no word but science has caught up with the spirit of the endeavour.¦