Cheat Sheet. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Am I? You could be, if you buy some fancy gadgetry and get yourself a web connection.

How fancy? Extremely. You will need a volunteer at one end hooked up to an electroencephalogram (EEG), a computer that can email coded messages, and another person at the other end wired to receive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Someone actually did all this? Successfully too. The team of scientists who conducted the experiment, who work in Spain, France and the US, say theirs was the first ‘conscious brain-to-brain communication in humans using non-invasive technologies’. Or, a form of modern day internet-linked telepathy.

So how does this work? The researchers had four participants, one sender and three receivers. The sender (who was stationed, by the way, in Thiruvananthapuram) wore an EEG cap that picked up electrical activity in his brain while he focused on moving an object on a screen. These electrical signals were converted into binary data and emailed to the three blindfolded receivers in France.

Email’s the only bit I understand. To finish the experiment, the receivers each got an electrical jolt (through TMS) to their occipital cortex, the part of the brain that ‘sees’ and processes images. The three subjects perceived (non-existent) flashes of light because of these jolts and figured out the encoded messages, which were either ‘hola’ or ‘ciao’. The scientists say their subjects got the message right 85 per cent of the time.

Phew! What happened to old-fashioned telepathy by psychics? Paranormal is so passé. This is SCIENCE.

Yes, but back then, no one tripped on wires. Anyway, the study, published in August in the journal PLOS One, says it explores the feasibility of bypassing traditional language-based interpersonal communication, besides one day teaching brains to chat directly, and fluently, with their humans’ computers.

Can this have uses that don’t sound so sci-fi? Of course. For instance, sometime in the future, your cell phone may be able to send a Whatsapp notification directly to your brain. The fact that this method is non-invasive, which means you won’t need to implant a sensor in your brain, makes it all very convenient.

Have people tried telepathy with implants before? Surgically-enabled telepathy is closer to reality than the non-invasive kind that these researchers were trying out. Militaries, for example, have been trying to create implant technology by which soldiers on a battlefield can communicate sans talk.

Does the non-invasive kind have military uses as well? It’s very likely it could. This experiment was partly funded by the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technology programme, which backs research with potential military uses.

So really advanced telepathy can control people’s brains? Yes, though there’s still a lot of research to be done before they can get rid of all the wires. There can be non-military uses as well, especially if we start communicating not just words but also emotions telepathically.

Such as? Video games can be played with just your brain as controller. You could find out what makes a customer reject your product or what your girlfriend is really thinking when she breaks up with you.

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