Brain Chains

Will Actual Mind Melding Make the World Smarter—or Scarier?
 

- Carrie L. Clickard

When it comes to power, memory, and processing speed, everyone wants more. If your computer can’t store or run the apps you need, one solution is to connect to a powerful network. What if we could do the same with our brains? If an Albert Einstein and a Marie Curie tapped into each other’s brain power, would we already have anti-gravity machines? Could four cancer researchers linked brain to-brain find a cure faster? What about 10 researchers, or 100? It’s an interesting question and one that scientists around the world are already studying: can we make a human brain chain? And if we do, will it help us unlock amazing possibilities or just lead to more headaches?

Two Heads Are Better (If They’re Linked)

When neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis thought about linking brains, he decided to start small and furry. His Duke University team trained rats to become “encoders” and “decoders” by solving a simple problem: which lever should they push to get a sip of water? Scientists taught encoder rats to know which lever would give them a reward. For example, if the light bulb over a lever lit up, pushing on that lever released a drink. Get it wrong? No drink. The rats had to train until they could choose correctly 95 percent of the time before they were ready to be part of a two-rat team.

Nicolelis’ team trained a second group of rats as “decoders.” These rats had the same levers and rewards, but they had to respond to tiny pulses of electricity that the researchers sent to their neurons. A single pulse meant lever 1 would give them a drink. Several pulses in a row meant they should pick lever 2. Decoder rats qualified for a team by getting it right about 70 percent of the time.