thought transmission over internet

Yesterday's Times ran an article on an experiment by the University of Southampton that claimed to demonstrate brain to brain communications. The claim was that 'they have created a system that allows brain to brain communication, sending messages formed by one person's brain signals through an internet connection to another person's brain many miles away. Let's get right to the point here. By typing this blog entry, I am creating thoughts in your brain many miles away via the internet, so that bit at least is not new. So the only possible significance of this experiment is if it were somehow to demonstrate being able to put thoughts into someone else's brain directly without using sensory input, e.g. vision. But as far as I can tell, it doesn't. It uses a flashing LED instead of letters on a screen, but that seems to be the main difference, except that the input uses simple thought recognition instead of typing, also well established now, though sadly still primitive. I explained this to the journalist, and was rather surprised to see he still ran the story. When he first contacted me, it sounded like someone had managed to create specific thoughts in a brain without using sensory inputs, which would have been very exciting.

I was quoted in the article saying that  'in 30 years time you'll think of a message and it will appear on your wife's mobile phone'. Sadly, the other comments I presented to the journalist didn't appear, so for the sake of completeness, and so that I am not misrepresented in any commentary as supporting the claims of the Southampton scientists, here is the text I sent:

"This is not what it pretends to be at all. It is merely using the pattern or intensity of signals from one person's brain to light an LED somewhere else, (trivially easy since about 1995 when it was released as a games device by a company called 'the other 90%'). The second person sees the LED flashing as the imput, it isn't direct brain stimulation at all, and the computer picks up signals from his brain which originate during the visual process, so no conscious interpretation would have been needed. Again, no big deal at all, brain imaging has been doing that for decades. The experiment is equivalent to you triggering activity in my brain by putting visual shapes in front of me, i.e. letters in an email, except that an LED fashes instead of a letter appearing. The message sent across the net was created using simple thought detection using readily available equipment. So this experiment shows nothing new, and is actually quite a poor illustration of misdirection. Some of the viewers' comments (on youtube) show clearly that people are happy to take it as described, yet it is no such thing. But at least one of them saw right through it thankfully."

I would have thought that this was pretty clear and the journalist should really have checked whether or not I was correct before still going ahead with it, reporting the claims as if they were correct. It wasn't actually a story worth running.

To his credit, Dr James (the scientist) admitted it was only a small step forwards towards telepathy and the innovation was 'the transmission of the signals to another person across the internet. However, the freely available Emotiv Epoc headset was designed for using thought recognition for playing computer games, and of course these days we take it for granted that games are often played across networks, so I'm afraid that even that small claim has long since been made elsewhere.

I am looking forward to thought transmission into someone else's brain. Output is already feasible, but brain stimulation so far cannot match up to the task of creating specific thoughts in a brain without going via the sensory route, not even (as far as I am aware) via deep implants or probes. When someone does that, I will be among the first back on my blog writing with excitement.