Is telepathy become a reality?

 For the first time, researchers have connected electronically the brains of pairs of mice to enable them to communicate directly to solve simple behavioral puzzles.

Another test of this idea succeeded in connecting the brains of two animals thousands of miles apart - one in Durham, North Carolina, and the other in Natal, Brazil.

 

Miguel Nicolelis, M.D. and Philosophy, lead author of the publication and professor of neurobiology at Duke University, School of Medicine, said: “Our previous studies with mediation between the brain and the machine have convinced us that the mouse brain is more plastic than we previously thought. In those experiments, the mouse brain was able to easily adapt to receive information from devices outside the body as well as learn how to process the invisible infrared rays generated by an artificial sensor. So the question we asked was, 'If the brain is able to absorb signals from artificial sensors, can it absorb the information input from sensors from another body?'

To test this hypothesis, the researchers trained pairs of mice on a simple problem: that the mice press the correct handle when an indicator light shines above the handle, and then the mice are rewarded with a sip of water. After this, the researchers wired the two animals' brains by means of arrays of microelectrodes inserted into the cortex that process motor information.

One of the rodents has been designated as the "coder" animal. This animal received a visual cue indicating which knob was pressing in exchange for a reward from the water. Once that "coded" mouse pressed the right handle, a sample of its brain activity that encoded its behavioral decision translated into a pattern of electrical stimulation that reached directly into the brain of the second mouse, the animal's "code interpreter".

The decoder mouse had the same type of knob in its chamber, but it didn't receive any visual cue on which knob it should press to get a reward. So, to hit the right knob and get the reward it craves, the decoder mouse has to rely on the signal sent from the encoder by the brain-to-brain connection.

The researchers then conducted experiments to determine the ability of the coding mouse to decode the information of the coding mouse's brain to choose the correct grip. In the end, the decoder mouse achieved a maximum success rate of about 70%, just below the maximum potential success rate of 78% that the researchers put in their theory that could have been achieved based on the success rates of sending the signals directly to the brain of the decoder mouse.

Importantly, communication achieved by connecting a brain to a brain has two directions. For example, the coding mouse did not receive a full reward if the coder missed the choice.

The result of this strange state of dependence, Nicolelis said, led to the establishment of a "behavioral cooperation" between the pair of mice.

“We noticed that if the mouse missed the decoder, the coding mouse simply changed both its brain activity and its behavior to make it easier for its partner to make the right choice. The coding mouse improved the signal-to-noise ratio from its brain activity that represented the choice, so the signal became clearer and It's easier to notice.

It also made a faster and clearer decision to choose the right handle to press. Consistently, when the coding mouse made these adaptations, the decoder mouse often made the right choice, and so both got a better reward. ”

In a second set of experiments, researchers trained pairs of mice to distinguish a narrow or wide aperture using their whiskers.

If the hole was narrow, they were trained to poke a watery port with their nose on the left side of the room to obtain a reward; If the hole is wide, they should poke a port on the right side of the room.

Next, the researchers divided the mice into coding mice and coding mice.

Code interpreters were trained to associate stimulus impulses with the left reward nudge as a correct choice, and the absence of impulses with the right reward nudge as a correct choice. During experiments in which the coding mice observed the width of the aperture and sent the selection to the coding mice, the success rate of the coding mice was about 65%, significantly higher than expected.

To test transmission limits by brain-to-brain communication, researchers put an encoded mouse in Brazil at the Edmund & Lilly Zefa International Institute for Neurosciences in Natal, and sent its brain signals via the Internet to a decoding-interpreter mouse in Durham, North Carolina.

And they found that the two mice could still work together on the task of sensing differences.

Miguel Pais-Vieira, Doctor of Philosophy, postdoctoral fellow and senior author of the study said: “So, even though the animals were on different continents, with the resulting noise transmission and signal malfunctions, they could still communicate, which tells us that it is possible to devise a functional network. From animal brains distributed in different places.

Nicolelis added, “These experiments demonstrated the ability to create precise, direct, interconnected communication between the brains of mice, and that the decoding mind functions as a pattern recognition machine. Simply put, we are creating an organic computer that solves a puzzle. ”

 Therefore, we create a single central nervous system consisting of the brains of both mice, ”Nicolelis also explained that, in principle, such a system is not limited to a pair of brains, rather it can include a network of brains, or a“ brain network ".

Nicolelis continued: “We cannot predict what kinds of consequential characteristics may arise when animals begin to interact as part of the brain network.

Basically, you can imagine that a group of brains can provide solutions that independent brains cannot achieve on their own. Such a connection would mean that one animal might integrate the 'sense of self' of another animal.

“In fact, our studies of the sensory cortex in mice that interpret the coding of these experiments showed that their brains began to embody in their sensory cortex and not only in their whiskers, but the whiskers of coding mice as well.

We noticed cortical nerve cells that responded to the two sets of mustache, which means that the mouse made a second incarnation of another body in addition to its own. ”

Basic studies of adaptations like these could lead to a new field that Nicolelis calls "the neurophysiology of social communication."

Such complex experiments would be possible through the laboratory's ability to record brain signals from about 2,000 brain cells simultaneously.

 

The researchers hope to simultaneously record 10-30,000 cortical neurons over the next five years.

Massive brain recordings like this would allow for more precise control of motor nerve replacement devices - such as those developed through the Walk Again Project - to restore the motor control of paralyzed people, Nicolelis said.