The researchers also trained pairs of rats to distinguish a narrow opening from a wide one using their whiskers. Videos of the experiments are available at and the paper is at dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep01319 “The encoder basically changed its brain function to make the signal cleaner and easier for its partner to get it right,” Nicolelis said. In that case, the encoder rat, apparently realizing what had happened, seemed to concentrate harder on its task: it decided more quickly to choose the correct lever and quashed extraneous thoughts so as not to muddy the signal with, perhaps, daydreams about escaping the lab or pressing the wrong lever.Īs a result, the signal got louder and sharper, and the decoder rats made fewer mistakes. The encoder rat did not get that reward if a decoder rat goofed. The encoder rats got the same treat, reaping the rewards of their partners’ success. Nevertheless, they usually pressed the correct lever and earned their after-work libation. Now when an encoding rat saw the red light and pressed the lever, its brain activity sped directly into the brains of seven decoder rats. The scientists next connected the rats’ brains directly, inserting microelectrodes roughly one-hundredth the width of a human hair. Rats intended to be message receivers, or decoders, were trained to press a lever when the scientists electrically stimulated their brains via implants. Doing so earned the animals a sip of water. In one experiment, the Duke researchers trained rats destined to be message senders, or encoders, to press a lever when a red light above them turned on. REUTERS/Nicoleilis, Duke University/Handout CODED SIGNALS ![]() ![]() That could make drone warfare seem as advanced as muskets.Ī split screen image shows an encoder rat in Natal, Brazil and decoder rat in a lab at Duke University, North Carolina. “Reading about putting things in animals’ brains and changing what they do, people rightly get nervous,” envisioning battalions of animal soldiers - or even human soldiers - whose brains are remotely controlled by others. “Having non-human primates communicate brain-to-brain raises all sorts of ethical concerns,” said one neuroscientist, who studies how brains handle motor and sensory information, but who asked not to be named. If that sounds like an ethical minefield, several experts think so too, especially since Nicolelis is now working on brain-to-brain communication between monkeys. The result: the second rat received the thoughts of the first, mimicking its behavior, researchers reported on Thursday in Scientific Reports, a journal of the Nature Publishing Group.Īdding to its science-fiction feel, the advance in direct brain-to-brain communication could lay the foundation for what Duke University Medical Center neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis, who led the research, calls an “organic computer” in which multiple brains are linked to solve problems solo brains can’t.
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