A picture of the author and his twin brother when they were younger
 by Adam
“Do you guys want to play some football?” My heart jumped and I immediately said, “Yeah let’s play!” A group of sixteen of my friends marched onto the field and we selected our teams. My twin brother, Alec, was one of the captains and he picked me first. All of my friends were looking at us puzzled. Alec and I are not the best football players, but we certainly make a great team. We’ve been throwing and catching the football since we were seven years old. Alec ran up to me before the play started and said, “I want you to play quarterback this drive. My arm doesn’t feel that strong today.” I took my position at quarterback feeling very uncomfortable. Whenever Alec and I play football together, I am always the receiver and he is always the quarterback. That’s just the way it is.
Before I took the snap, I had a funny feeling that Alec was trying to tell me something. Not verbal communication or any facial expression or signal; whatever it was, I knew that he wanted the deep ball. So I called hike and the ball was snapped to me and I threw the ball as far as I could. The defense looked back, only to see that my brother Alec caught the ball with nobody contesting him. He leaped into the end zone and we celebrated our touchdown. “Wow!” said Victor. “You guys are an amazing team, it’s like you guys used some kind of twin telepathy on that play. It’s amazing how you knew that the deep ball was going to be there, you didn’t even tell each other it was coming.”
Stories like this are quite common amongst twins and it got me thinking about the possibility of brain-to-brain communication (B2B). Is it possible for humans to communicate through the power of thought alone? Currently, people can communicate with brainwaves using Brain-Computer interfacing (BCI) is used to control devices such as computers, and virtual reality environments with the power of thought. For instance, people who are paralyzed can used their brain waves to run a wheelchair or use a computer. This technology that they use is (BCI) and it captures brain signals and turns them into commands.
Dr. Christopher James, from the University of Southampton in the UK, is from the institute of Sound and Vibration Research. Dr. James is part of University of Southampton’s Brain-Computer Research Program, which combines biomedical engineering and clinical sciences. This allows the advancement of neurophysiologic tools and systems, for example, thought controlled wheelchairs. He has expanded on BCI technology and attempted an experiment where technology could make brain-to-brain communication a reality.
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The first person is attached to EEG scalp electrodes. Their brain activity can be captured through an EEG amplifier, which is then sent off to the computer and sent over the Internet to a second subject. The person is sending a series of binary numbers (from 0-1) by imagining moving their left hand to represent zero and their right hand to represent one. Person number two is also attached to an EEG amplifier, but the difference is that their computer is receiving, through the Internet, the binary numbers, not sending them. An LED light flashes at two different frequencies, one for zero and another for one. The computer is able to decipher the brain waves that person two is generating when they see the flashing LED light whether a zero or one was transmitted. This second user doesn’t know which number was transmitted, but despite that, the information can still be recovered. As you watch this experiment, you will realize that this experiment truly shows brain-to-brain communication.
Do you think this experiment represent real brain-to-brain communication? Why or why not? Could more complex information instead of just zeros and ones be transferred using this method?
