The Day Has Arrived: Introducing Technical Telepathy
Telepathy isn’t as far-fetched as you think thanks to brain—brain interfaces.
If you could have any superpower in the world, what would it be? For those of you who chose telepathy, you can already do it (if hooked up to the correct machines). Want to learn how? In four simple steps, you can learn the basics of telepathy, brain waves, brain-computer interfaces and brain-brain interfaces (how to telepathize in short).
Step 1: Understanding Telepathy
Through the reliable Oxford Languages dictionary, the word telepathy defines as, “the supposed communication of thoughts or ideas by means other than the known senses.”
The notion of communicating without speaking has been around since the 1880s by the scholar: Frederic W. H. Some say telepathy exists spiritually although, its existence has never been scientifically proven. Telepathy could be extremely useful as it addresses people with speaking conditions. People with traumatic brain disorders, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cerebral palsy, chronic peripheral neuropathies and other disabilities could benefit from communicating in different ways rather than using sensory means.
On the contrary, several ethical dilemmas arise from using brain-computer/brain-brain interfaces to communicate between people. Telepathy might pose a threat to mental privacy. Your thoughts and feelings would be out for public display. Additionally, it would remove the emotional connection between trying to sympathize with another since they would be easy to read.
All in all, telepathy hasn’t been achieved yet. Hence, it is far too early to tell what its impacts are on humanity. Either way, finding ways to communicate between humans telepathically could solve several medical issues, and therefore should be explored further.
Step 2: Analyzing brain waves
In order to understand the connection between telepathy and brain-computer interfaces, you must comprehend the basics of the brain. All thoughts, feelings, emotions and memories come from the brain and can be measured through brain waves.
Neural oscillations (brain waves for short) are evidence of electrical signals in our brains. Out of the billions of neurons in the brain, the synchronization of a few generates an electrical pattern that we can record as “brain waves.” Synchrony in the brain causes neurons in different parts of the brain to fire together rather than separately, which sends a strong signal from one part of the brain to another. In short, the synchronization of neurons tunes different brain parts into the same frequencies, hence a brain “wave.” This process of cell-to-cell communication is also known as synaptic transmission. Healthy brain waves follow a repetitive pattern (such as when you are walking or sleeping). In contrast, a person with epilepsy would produce unpredictable brain waves with almost no repetitive pattern.
Your brain experiences many different frequencies at once however, some are more prominent than others depending on what you are doing. There are five types of brain waves: delta, theta, alpha, beta, and most recently discovered, gamma. Let’s break them all down through a day in the life of a human being.
Alert and Focused → Every day starts in the beta stage. As soon as you wake up, open your eyes and perceive daylight, a signal is sent from an optic nerve in your eye through a pathway called the pineal gland. This creates a neurotransmitter called serotonin (think of it like a “chemical messenger”). Once you become aware of your outer world, your brain fires off serotonin.
High Performance → Now, as a part of your daily routine, you are off to school. Unfortunately, there is a pop quiz in math today. As you try to understand difficult concepts and focus greatly on the questions in front of you, your brain waves shift into gamma waves. At this stage, you are highly conscious. You produce the fastest brain waves when trying to solve problems that require an immense amount of focus.
Relaxed → Finally, your long and tiring day at school is over. As you lay on your couch and turn on the TV, you start to relax. At this point, you are semi-conscious and produce alpha waves. You’re not tired enough to drift off to sleep nor attentive enough to produce fast brain waves.
Deeply Relaxed → Suddenly, you start to feel extremely tired and drift off to sleep. Your eye movement, muscle activity and brain activity decrease and start to prepare for deep sleep. This occurs in stage 2 of your sleep cycle. You may even start to dream about getting a perfect score on your pop quiz. Instead of producing serotonin, your brain produces melatonin by the pineal gland, which is released into your bloodstream. In this stage, your brain produces theta waves.
Asleep → Lastly, you are in a deep sleep. You may even continue to dream at this stage. In the third and fourth stages of your sleep cycle, your brain will produce delta waves. These are the slowest brain waves out of the five types of brain waves.
Step 3: Brain-Computer Interfaces
A device called an EEG (electroencephalogram) measures the electrical signals firing off in your brain using small discs called electrodes that are attached to your scalp. It does this by measuring and recording a large group of active neurons in small areas around each electrode. Simply put, it measures your brain waves. The event-related potential is a direct response of the brain caused by a sensory, cognitive or motor event. Using an EEG, you can measure your brain patterns while doing certain activities (such as sleeping) or during a specific event in order to record your event-related potential.
Muse
The Muse 2 EEG headband is a widely used brain-reading device used for neuroscience. It is an EEG device that tracks brain signals and detects when its user is distracted or stressed. I personally received this headband thanks to Derek Luke, the CEO of Muse after being incredibly inspired by the useful and complex projects that other BCI experts have created with it. I wanted to get my hands on my own headband and play around with its ability to record brain wave activity.
NextMind
A recent and more powerful EEG device compared to the Muse headband is the NextMind BCI. It allows users to detect neural activity from the visual cortex and inputs data into machine learning algorithms. From there, it translates the data into digital commands. One of the simpler things you can do with this emerging technology is control VR games with your mind. There is still so much more that we have yet to develop with these EEG devices!
Applications
BCIs are now being used in various sectors including entertainment, medicine and education. A couple of examples include using your mind to control a cursor on a laptop by simply focusing on a certain thought or idea, controlling a prosthetic arm, receiving an alert every time you start to zone off or lose focus and so much more. However, this is just the beginning. Take a look at what Card79 believes for the future of BCIs.
Step 4: Brain-Brain Interfaces
Now, you might be wondering, what do BCIs have to do with telepathy?
“Already we can take MRI scans, EEG scans of the brain, decipher them using computers, [and] shoot that information to another person. This is called radio-enhanced telepathy.” — Michio Kaku (American theoritcal physicist, known for creating the string field theory)
By placing extremely tiny neurological chips into the brain, neural impulses (also known as electrical signals caused by stimulated neurons) can be translated into a radio signal. From there, the radio signal can travel to a receiver (in this case, a similar chip in another human’s brain) and translate back into a neural impulse to then be understood by the receiver. This concept of radio-enhanced telepathy can be used in close proximity or over greater distances.
The direct communication between two brains is called a brain-brain interface. The communication between two different brains of humans or animals has already been achieved. Don’t believe me? Listen to this.
Brazilian scientist, physician, M.D and Ph.D. Miguel Nicolelis conducted a study where he linked the mind of several rats together by implanting electrodes into their brains. They learned to link the electrical activity of their neurons to the same extent to the point where they acted as one single brain.
Not only is invasive brain-brain interfaces possible, but noninvasive telepathy as well. Neuroscientists Andrea Stocco and Rajesh Rao tested the world’s first human brain-brain interface. Both participants sat in different rooms across campus so there was no possibility of hearing or seeing each other during the test. Dr. Rao was hooked up to an EEG device as he was the sender. He was watching a game on a TV screen that has missiles flying by however, there were no controls so he couldn’t shoot the missiles. Andrea was hooked up to a machine with a magnetic coil positioned directly on top of the part of his brain that signals him to move his hand. He was the receiver. His hand was positioned on top of the space button on a keyboard. Unlike Dr. Rao, he was not watching the game however, he had the ability to control the game. So, in order for the missile to be shot, Dr. Rao had to focus on a thought or an idea, which sent a signal through the EEG device, travelled through the internet, reached the same machine Andrea was hooked up to, beamed a magnetic signal through his brain and pressed his finger on the space bar.
Next Step: Research
In order to continue the development of BCIs and BBIs, we must continue to research and experiment. Right now, we can control cars with our minds and send signals from one human brain to another to perform a task. However, the efficiency and practicality of this technology are far from the future. Although, that is not to say that we won’t get there. With the help of several research teams across the world, the popularity and development of BCIs/BBIs are picking up quickly. It is only a matter of time before we move from texting and calling as a form of communication to telepathy.
Thanks for reading my article. Give it a clap if you enjoyed it! If you’re interested in my progress with BCIs, follow me for more content! P.S — I’ll be using the Muse headband in my next projects so if you want to stay updated, be sure to follow :)
Helpful Resources
Bates, Kristyn. “Brain-To-Brain Interfaces: The Science of Telepathy.” The Conversation, theconversation.com/brain-to-brain-interfaces-the-science-of-telepathy-37926.
Locke, Susannah. “Brain-To-Brain Communication Is Finally Possible. It’s Just Very Clunky.” Vox, 7 Sept. 2014, www.vox.com/2014/9/7/6115573/telepathy-brain-communication-EEG-TMS.
Martone, Robert. “Scientists Demonstrate Direct Brain-To-Brain Communication in Humans.” Scientific American, 29 Oct. 2019, www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-demonstrate-direct-brain-to-brain-communication-in-humans/.
Sheppe, Rob. “Stuff from the Future — What Is Radio Telepathy?” Www.youtube.com, 7 Sept. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WqgIn2HD2U&ab_channel=HowStuffWorks. Accessed 16 Oct. 2022.
