Miguel Nicolelis Explains How Brain-to-Brain Communication Is Here, and Will Change Our Lives

 Neuroscience  

Speaking at TED recently, neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis discussed how he helped a paraplegic man kick the first ball at the World Cup, and how his work on brain-machine interfaces and brain-brain interfaces may impact the world.

Miguel Nicolelis helped build the brain-controlled exoskeleton that helped Juliano Pinto, a paraplegic man, kick the first ball at the 2014 World Cup.

Nicolelis is best known for pioneering studies in neuronal population coding, Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI) and neuroprosthetics in human patients and non-human primates. But his lab is thinking even bigger. They've developed an integrative approach to studying neurological disorders, including Parkinsons disease and epilepsy. The approach, they hope, will allow the integration of molecular, cellular, systems and behavioral data in the same animal, producing a more complete understanding of the nature of the neurophysiological alterations associated with these disorders.

What’s he working on now? Building ways for two minds (rats and monkeys, for now) to send messages brain to brain. Watch to the end for an experiment that, as he says, will go to "the limit of your imagination."

Related articles Miguel Nicolelis Says The Singularity Is Hot Air Deep Brain Stimulation's Dramatic Effect On Parkinson's Patient Demonstrated  Wireless Brain Sensor Developed At Brown University

Nicolelis explores the potential of connecting brains with machines and other brains in his recent book, Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines---and How It Will Change Our Lives.

Nicolelis sees a world where people use their computers, drive their cars, and communicate with one another simply by thinking.

"Brain actuating technology is here."

"Brain actuating technology is here," says Nicolelis in the TED Talk above. "This is the latest: we just published this a year ago, the first brain-to-brain interface that allows two animals to exchange mental messages so that one animal that sees something coming from the environment can send a mental SMS, a torpedo, a neurophysiological torpedo, to the second animal, and the second animal performs the act that he needed to perform without ever knowing what the environment was sending as a message, because the message came from the first animal's brain."

"Where is this going? We have no idea. We're just scientists," says Nicolelis. "We are paid to be children, to basically go to the edge and discover what is out there. But one thing I know: one day, in a few decades, when our grandchildren surf the net just by thinking, or a mother donates her eyesight to an autistic kid who cannot see, or somebody speaks because of a brain-to-brain bypass, some of you will remember that it all started on a winter afternoon in a Brazilian soccer field with an impossible kick."

SOURCE  TED

By 33rd Square

Embed