A brain-to-brain interface for real-time sharing of sensorimotor information

A brain-to-brain interface (BTBI) enabled a real-time transfer of behaviorally meaningful sensorimotor information between the brains of two rats. In this BTBI, an "encoder" rat performed sensorimotor tasks that required it to select from two choices of tactile or visual stimuli. While the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2013-02, Vol.3 (1), p.1319-1319, Article 1319
Main Authors: Pais-Vieira, Miguel, Lebedev, Mikhail, Kunicki, Carolina, Wang, Jing, Nicolelis, Miguel A L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Behavior, Animal - physiology
Brain
Brain - physiology
Cortex
Electric Stimulation
Information processing
Microelectrodes
Motor Cortex - physiology
Rats
Rats, Long-Evans
Sensorimotor system
Tactile stimuli
Visual stimuli
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Summary:A brain-to-brain interface (BTBI) enabled a real-time transfer of behaviorally meaningful sensorimotor information between the brains of two rats. In this BTBI, an "encoder" rat performed sensorimotor tasks that required it to select from two choices of tactile or visual stimuli. While the encoder rat performed the task, samples of its cortical activity were transmitted to matching cortical areas of a "decoder" rat using intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). The decoder rat learned to make similar behavioral selections, guided solely by the information provided by the encoder rat's brain. These results demonstrated that a complex system was formed by coupling the animals' brains, suggesting that BTBIs can enable dyads or networks of animal's brains to exchange, process, and store information and, hence, serve as the basis for studies of novel types of social interaction and for biological computing devices.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep01319