Skip to main content

We may soon be able to connect our brains in a ‘brainet,’ synchronizing our intelligence

monkey rat brains connected to form brainet brain
You know what they say: Two heads are better than one, and three heads are better than two. But now, it’s more than an idiomatic expression. In a new report published in Nature, scientists detail how they successfully linked the brains of multiple rats and monkeys, creating an “organic computer” or a “brainet” that can do some pretty incredible things. As Miguel Nicolelis, the study’s lead author, told The Guardian, “Essentially, we created a super-brain,” one that worked together to move a prosthetic arm, or alternatively, predict the weather.

Though the technology has only been tested on monkeys and rats thus far, the implications for the human mind are truly exciting. In one experiment, scientists wired the brains of three monkeys who were placed in separate rooms, and tasked them with controlling a virtual arm they observed on a screen. Their brains were not connected to one another, but rather to a computer, and only by thinking together could they successfully create movement on the screen. After completing this task, the team added an additional challenge, allowing each monkey to only control one dimension of movement. Still, the monkeys were able to think together. Said Nicolelis, “They synchronize their brains and they achieve the task by creating a superbrain — a structure that is the combination of three brains.”

In another experiment though, the team did connect brains to one another, as well as to a computer. Four rats were mind-linked and rewarded whenever they achieved some sort of synchrony in their brain activity. After their 10th training session, the rats thought as one a stunning 61 percent of the time. And when they used the power of all four of their brains, the rats were able to solve simple weather problems, like whether or not it would rain, with a much higher rate of accuracy than they were able to do independently.

Said Nicolelis, “This is the first demonstration of a shared brain-machine interface, a paradigm that has been translated successfully over the past decades from studies in animals all the way to clinical applications.” Much like parallel processing works in a computer, a number of scientists and academics have expressed great excitement over the wealth of possibilities this study opens up, especially when applied to humans. Andrea Stocco of the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not part of the original project, told the New Scientist, “Once brains are connected, applications become just a matter of what different animals can do. All anyone can probably ask of a monkey is to control movement, but we can expect much more from human minds … Sometimes it’s really hard to collaborate if you are a mathematician and you’re thinking about very complex and abstract objects. If you could collaboratively solve common problems [using a brainet], it would be a way to leverage the skills of different individuals for a common goal.”

So who knows, perhaps in the not-so-distant future, we’ll be able to share a collective intelligence to solve all the world’s problems.

Editors' Recommendations

Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
Artificial intelligence can now predict heart failure, and that may save lives
ai heart disease 3d

An artificial intelligence system has accurately predicted when patients with heart conditions will die, according to new results published in the journal Radiology.

The study was conducted by a team of scientists at the London Institute of Medical Services, who trained the software to analyze blood tests and intricate 3D models of beating hearts in order to detect signs of failure. The AI was assigned 256 patients diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension, a type of high blood pressure which impacts the lungs and can cause dizziness, fainting, and shortness of breath.

Read more
'StarCraft II' will soon be used as training grounds for artificial intelligence
Starcraft 2

On Friday during the BlizzCon 2016 opening keynote, Blizzard revealed that it teamed up with Google to provide an application programming interface (API) for DeepMind to be used in StarCraft II. This will enable artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning researchers from around the world to create intelligent “bots” to play the game. In return, the knowledge gained while playing will be used in real-world applications.

“An agent that can play StarCraft will need to demonstrate effective use of memory, an ability to plan over a long time, and the capacity to adapt plans based on new information,” said research scientist Oriol Vinyals of the DeepMind team. “Computers are capable of extremely fast control, but that doesn’t necessarily demonstrate intelligence, so agents must interact with the game within limits of human dexterity in terms of ‘Actions Per Minute.’”

Read more
Scientists say they can tell how smart you are by analyzing MRI scans of your brain
fmri human brain tech mri feat

Can brain scans detect human intellect? It sounds pretty far-out, but scientists from the University of Warwick think it could be possible.

More dynamic brains with more interactive regions correlate with higher IQs and creativity in their subjects, according to research by Warwick’s Professor Jianfeng Feng, who published a paper in the Oxford University journal Brain.

Read more