Mind-Meld: Neuroscientists Link Three Monkey Brains Into Living Computer

I've said a few times that we may be watching a guy win a Medicine/Physiology Nobel, in real time.
And as a bonus we get the understated pull-quote of the week:

"In principle we could communicate information much faster [with a brainet] than with vision and language, but there's a really high bar,"...

- Jason Ritt, Ph.D., Boston University

Errrrrmmm, yes.

From New Scientist:

Animal brains connected up to make mind-melded computer

Two heads are better than one, and three monkey brains can control an avatar better than any single monkey. For the first time, a team has networked the brains of multiple animals to form a living computer that can perform tasks and solve problems.

If human brains could be similarly connected, it might give us superhuman problem-solving abilities, and allow us to communicate abstract thoughts and experiences. "It is really exciting," says Iyad Rahwan at the Masdar Institute in Dubai, UAE, who was not involved in the work. "It will change the way humans cooperate."

The work, published today, is an advance on standard brain-machine interfaces – devices that have enabled people and animals to control machines and prosthetic limbs by thought alone. These tend to work by converting the brain's electrical activity into signals that a computer can interpret.

Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and his colleagues wanted to extend the idea by incorporating multiple brains at once. The team connected the brains of three monkeys to a computer that controlled an animated screen image representing a robotic arm, placing electrodes into brain areas involved in movement.

By synchronising their thoughts, the monkeys were able to move the arm to reach a target – at which point the team rewarded them with with juice.

Brainet

Then the team made things trickier: each monkey could only control the arm in one dimension, for example. But the monkeys still managed to make the arm reach the target by working together. "They synchronise their brains and they achieve the task by creating a superbrain – a structure that is the combination of three brains," says Nicolelis. He calls the structure a "brainet".

These monkeys were connected only to a computer, not one another, but in a second set of experiments, the team connected the brains of four rats to a computer and to each other. Each rat had two sets of electrodes implanted in regions of the brain involved in movement control – one to stimulate the brain and another to record its activity....MORE

Previously on the way-smarter-than-me channel: 

March 8, 2015

Doc Nicolelis: "Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it"

Apr. 23, 2014

"World Cup Mind-Control Demo Faces Deadlines, Critics"

Nov. 6, 2013
Huh, The Brain/Machine Interface Biz Made Some Progress Last Month
September 17, 2013 
Where In the World Is Izabella Kaminska?--"Scientist Hacks Into Another Scientist's Mind"
March 2, 2013 
Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld
Feb. 23, 2013 
Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain 
Feb. 21, 2013
UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...."
Feb. 8, 2013
"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?)