An absolutely ground breaking science experiment was conducted recently where two people who were 8000 km apart managed to speak from one brain to the other without using a telephone! A brain to brain transmission was facilitated between a person in France and another one in India.

Alvaronn Pascual-Leone, from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center and Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School said that they wanted to find out if communication was possible by reading brain activity. So they used internet linked electro encephalo gram of EEG to send the words “Hola” and “Ciao” from one person to the other using brain activity.

Four subjects were used wherein one was assigned to the brain computer interface or BCI where he sent the words out and the other three were assigned to computer brain interface CBI and had to receive and interpret the message. Both the words were first converted into binary code and emailed to the subjects. The message was transmitted to the subjects in noninvasive brain stimulation such as flashes of light in their peripheral vision.

The light was then decoded in the brain of the subjects. While they did not report feeling anything the subjects successfully received the correct greeting. The science project was a huge success and could lead to a number of applications. So move over smartphones, the brain is here to stay!