Send e-mails - communicate through telepathy...

There are often things, which you wonder whether ‘can happen’ ? Iyer the Great released in 1990 in Malayalam, directed by Bhadran and starring Mammootty, Geetha was an interesting movie.  The hero, Vaikundam Soorya Narayana Iyer (Mammootty), a normal business executive leads a normal family life along with Veni Geetha, his wife and his mother Sukumari. One day, up on climbing a tall tree in order to capture an escaped pet parrot, Iyer undergoes (fear of heights) giving him the power of ‘clairvoyance’. His mind undergoes severe strain after this opening a new revelation.  He is able to predict many things which taken him to stardom and makes him famous …

One similar thing is Telepathy – (tele meaning "distant" and pathos meaning "feeling, perception, passion, affliction, experience") - the purported transmission of information from one person to another without using any of our known sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W. H. Myers and has remained more popular than the earlier expression thought-transference.  Telepathy is a common theme in modern fiction and science fiction, with many extraterrestrials, superheroes and supervillains having telepathic ability.

It is not in fiction in movies alone – as proved by these researchers. With a blindfold covering his eyes, and earplugs cancelling out almost all sound, Dr Michel Berg sat in a state-of-the-art laboratory at the University of Strasbourg in north-eastern France, and began to think. Nearly 5,000 miles away, at a research facility in the Indian city of Kerala, a young Spanish man called Dr Alejandro Riera pulled on a tightly fitting hat, placed a laptop computer on a white table, and also began to think. The two men aimed to send a simple message between each other, across the continents, without using any of the five senses that human beings — and indeed animals — have for millennia used to communicate. They instead hoped to achieve what scientists call ‘mind-to-mind direct technological communication’ — and the rest of us would recognise by a single, tantalising word: telepathy.

The experiment in speaking via ‘thought’ happened in conditions of absolute secrecy. Until recently, only a small team numbering a dozen researchers (including Dr Berg and Dr Riera) were even aware of its existence.  That all changed a few days ago (in Aug 2014)  when PLOS ONE, a website little known outside academia, published a peer-reviewed scientific paper detailing its outcome.  Daily Mail reports that the report is lengthy and jargon-ridden. But to a layman, its findings seem little short of sensational. For on that afternoon in March, Dr Berg and Dr Riera were indeed able to achieve ‘conscious brain-to-brain communication’.

With Scientists being able to transmit message into the mind of a colleague 5,000 miles away using brain waves – perhaps a day would soon come when we can send even emails 'telepathically'?  The Scientists used EEG headsets to record electrical activity in the brain and it is reported that electrical activity from words ‘hola’ and ‘ciao’ were converted into binary.  The greeting was sent from Thiruvananthapuram, India to Strasbourg. A computer translated the message and then used electrical stimulation to implant it in the receiver’s mind, appearing as specific flashes of light.  According to the researchers, this is the first time humans have sent a message almost directly into each other’s brains.

Brain-wave sensing machines have been used to ‘telepathically’ control everything from real-life helicopters to characters in a computer game. Now the technology has gone a step further by allowing someone in India to send an email to his colleague in France using nothing but the power of his mind. The researchers used electroencephalography (EEG) headsets to record electrical activity from neurons firing in the brain, and convert the words ‘hola’ and ‘ciao’ into binary.  In EEG, electrical currents in the brain are linked with different thoughts that are then fed into a computer interface.

There, a computer translated the message and then used electrical stimulation to implant it in the receiver’s mind.  This message appeared as flashes of light in the corner of their vision. In France, a computer translated the message and then used electrical stimulation to implant it in the receiver’s mind that appeared as flashes of light in the corner of their vision. The light appeared in sequences that allowed the receiver to decode the information in the message. Researchers then conducted a similar experiment in which thoughts were successfully transmitted from two participants, one in Spain and one in France.

The human brain is made up of billions of active neurons that have around 105,600 miles (170,000 km) of combined length. Every time you have a thought, your brain produces weak but distinct electrical signals corresponding to it. The electrical impulse is generated by the chemical reaction between neurons, which can be measured. According to the researchers, this is the first time humans have sent a message ‘almost directly’ into each other’s brains. The evolution of civilization points to a progressive increase of the interrelations between human minds, where by “mind” we mean a set of processes carried out by the brain.  The computer-mediated brain-to-brain transmission from Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala state, India) (BCI side) to Strasbourg, France (CBI) was realized using internet-linked EEG and TMS technologies respectively. The power of mind and the Scientific research is amazing indeed.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

4^th Nov. 2014.