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In one lab, an image of an object is shown to a study participant on a computer screen. The subject wears a cap connected to an electroencephalography (EEG) machine that monitors his brain waves.
Another participant, the asker, sits in another lab on campus. It’s her job to figure out what image the answerer was shown. The asker has a magnetic coil almost touching her skull. She selects a question from a list on a touchscreen to narrow down the object, 20-questions style.
The question she asks appears on the screen in front of the answerer. To the left and right of the screen are two LED lights, flashing at different frequencies. One side is labeled ‘yes’ and the other ‘no’. He answers the question by staring at the correct light. Chantel Prat, a psychologist at the University of Washington and a co-author on the paper, told Popular Science that the computer can distinguish what light he looks at because different frequencies of light trigger different brain patterns in response.
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In the study, published Wednesday in PLOS One, participants guessed the correct object 72 percent of the time. To make sure it wasn’t due to chance or cheating, the researchers also ran control games where the participants thought they were communicating but no data was being sent. In those conditions, they only guessed correctly 18 percent of the time.
Read full, original post: Humans in different buildings linked brain-to-brain
