5G, Graphene Oxide, and Wireless Mind Control Goes Mainstream

• With new technology, mind control is no longer science-fiction
  by Lily Toomey, Neuroscience, Curtin University, 10 Oct 2018, https://massivesci.com/
  We can only transmit basic signals between brains, but we should consider the ethics before moving on to complex thoughts.
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  Reading minds seems to be a common part of the science-fiction canon—a genre much loved by actual scientists. But even as someone who turned their love of Kurt Vonnegut, John Wyndham and H.G. Wells into a career as a neuroscientist, I hadn’t considered telepathy a serious avenue for research—until recently.
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  Lately, there’s been a lot of hype in the neuroscience world about a technology called “brain-to-computer interfaces,” which are electric networks which can send a person’s brain signals to a computer. This computer can then be taught to read these signals, and use them to perform a variety of tasks. For example, just last year this sort of device was used to record the movement signals in the brain of disabled stroke patients, sending an electrical current to an upper body exoskeleton that controlled the person’s limbs —allowing these patients to regain control over their hands and arms.
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  But another promising kind of interface that so far has received less attention is the brain-to-brain interface, or BBI. A brain-to-brain interface records the signals in one person’s brain, and then sends these signals through a computer in order to transmit them into the brain of another person. This process allows the second person to “read” the mind of the first or, in other words, have their brain fire in a similar pattern to the original person.
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  Back in 2013, the first study in which two brains were successfully joined to collaborate and complete a task was published in Scientific Reports. First, Miguel Pais-Vieira and his colleagues trained rats to perform a basic task: the animals were trained to press one of two levers, with the correct lever signalled with a light. The correct choice gave them access to water. Once the rats could successfully complete this task four out of five times, they were assigned as either the encoder—the one sending signals—or the decoder, the one receiving them. Encoder rats were surgically implanted with recording wires that measured activity in the motor areas of their brain, while decoder rats were implanted with stimulating wires in the same area. Each one was kept in a separate container, and only the encoder rats were shown the light signal on the levers. As the encoder rats chose a lever, neurons in their brain started firing.
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  The BBI recorded this activity, transformed it, and used it to stimulate an equivalent pattern into the brain of the decoder rat. The decoder rat had to correctly press a lever based on this stimulation. (Water was only given if both animals successfully pushed the right lever.) The researchers found that both rats pushed the correct lever 62 percent of the time, or more than chance probability.
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  Within a year, applications for this kind of device ballooned. In November of 2014, the first real-time BBI for humans was developed by Rajesh Rao and colleagues at the University of Washington. Unlike the poor rats, the human device was non-invasive, meaning surgery wasn’t required. This device transferred the movement signals from the encoder straight to the motor area of the brain of the decoder, without using a computer. In the study, Rao and his team used an electroencephalography (EEG), placing recording wires on the scalp of the encoding person. Then the scientists used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) on the decoding person’s brain, sending little magnetic pulses through their skull to activate a specific region of their brain. This caused the second person to take the action that the first person meant to—for example, to press a button.
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