“Great minds think alike” is no longer just a phrase, but a fact – that’s one of the first things the University of Washington website says to explain the Bridging Brains project. Rajesh Rao, a researcher at the university is currently working on a non-invasive technology allowing communication between two brains through the internet. After attaining its initial funding of 1 million USD in 2014, the project has had great success.
One of the first experiments conducted was a computer game, where one person was seeing a monitor with rockets that had to be shot down; however, the fire button was placed in front of a second person, who was seated half a mile away, and in a completely different building! To top this off, the fire action required split-second accuracy (i.e., the game was very fast). Using the brain transmitting technology, the experiment achieved success rates of up to 83%! And, even if we look at the lowest one, of 25%, this still means that in quarter of the cases, the technology successfully transmitted brain signals between people that were without any contact with each other!
The future uses of this are vast, but the one that amazes me the most is the so-called “brain tutoring” – the idea of transferring knowledge directly from the teacher’s brain to the pupil’s one. First of all, no more painstaking mathematical classes for children – understanding algebra, trigonometry, and statistics will happen so much faster! Additionally, this will be especially relevant for university students – probably each of us has had at least one professor that was, inarguably, a great expert in their field, however, unfortunately, he or she couldn’t really explain things well – this is because language greatly constraints us (and some even more so than others). So one day, we are going to be able to connect our brain with the professor’s one and directly receive knowledge… just think how awesome that would be!
Sources:
https://www.washington.edu/boundless/bridging-brains/
