In February, a very real paper ran in Scientific Reports titled, “Human Mind Control of Rat Cyborg’s Continuous Locomotion with Wireless Brain-to-Brain Interface.” It described how existing technology — such as brain-brain interfaces (BBIs) and, incredibly, rat cyborgs — can work together to produce that eye-popping title.
BBIs and brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) have already helped improve how people control prosthetics and other devices. But the technology can also function the other way around — instead of a brain controlling a device, a machine can alter brain patterns or “import tactile information back to the brain,” as the study’s authors put it. So, in effect, BMIs could allow for mechanically “controlling” others’ brains.
Here’s how it works in practice: A human manipulator has movement-related thoughts, which a wearable EEG — a device that records brain wave patterns — picks up and transfers to a computer. The computer translates that signal into ...
