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February 28, 2013 2:01 pm
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Telepathic rats solve problems together
By Clive Cookson
Rats have collaborated telepathically to solve problems across continents in the first
use of neurotechnology to transmit thoughts directly between animals’ brains.
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Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneer of research into brain-computer interfaces at Duke
University in North Carolina, worked on the experiments with scientists at the Safra
International Institute for Neuroscience of Natal in his native Brazil. Their results
were published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
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Prof Nicolelis called the experiments an initial step
towards the creation of a biological computer or
“brain-net” linking multiple brains. “We cannot even
predict what kinds of emergent properties would
appear when animals begin interacting as part of a
brain-net.”
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“In theory, you could imagine that a combination of
brains could provide solutions that individual brains
cannot achieve by themselves,” he said. “One animal
might even incorporate another’s sense of self.”
Previous research has shown that visual and tactile
information can be fed into and out of an individual
rat’s brain, using microscopic electrodes implanted in
the cortex – most recently when the animals learnt to
“feel” invisible infrared radiation.
The new study involved training pairs of animals in
distant cages to solve a simple problem in return for a
drink. In the first experiment they had to press the
correct lever corresponding to a particular indicator
light; in the second they had to distinguish between
wide and narrow openings.
The electrical brain activity picked up by electrodes in the brain of the first rat, the
“encoder”, was fed into the brain of the second animal, the “decoder”, which had
the same levers in its cage but received no visual cue about which one to press.
It took up to a month for the rats to tune into one another’s brainwaves, but
eventually the best decoder animals achieved a 70 per cent success rate – not far
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/422e4e8a-8197-11e2-904c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2MCvbhmR0[2/28/2013 10:22:05 AM]
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Telepathic rats solve problems together - FT.com
from the theoretical maximum of 78 per cent, which the scientists calculated was
the maximum achievable with their experimental set-up.
The encoder got a better reward if the decoder also made the right choice, leading
to two-way neural collaboration between the two rats.
“We saw that when the decoder rat committed an error, the encoder basically
changed both its brain function and behaviour to make it easier for its partner to
get it right,” said Prof Nicolelis. “The encoder improved the signal-to-noise ratio of
its brain activity that represented the decision, so the signal became cleaner and
easier to detect.”
A scan of the decoder’s brain showed that it began to represent the encoder’s
whiskers as well as its own whiskers in the tactile cortex, “which means that the rat
created a representation of a second body on top of its own,” he said.
The collaboration worked not only when both rats were in the same lab but also
when one was at Duke and the other in Brazil. “Even though the animals were on
different continents, with the resulting noisy transmission and signal delays, they
could still communicate,” said Miguel Pais-Vieira, another member of the team.
“This tells us that we could create a workable network of animal brains distributed
in many different locations.”
Professor Christopher James, an expert on brain-computer interfacing at Warwick
University in the UK, said the Duke team’s plans for multi-brain networks might
work in animals but, for ethical and practical reasons, would not be appropriate for
humans in the foreseeable future.
“The system would require placing invasive electrodes in participants and the visual
and tactile brain signals involved are quite crude,” Prof James said. “You could not
exchange abstract thoughts.”
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http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/422e4e8a-8197-11e2-904c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2MCvbhmR0[2/28/2013 10:22:05 AM]