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Brains wired up to work together
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Brains wired up to work together TWO heads are better than one, and three monkey brains can control an avatar better than any single monkey. For the first time, animal brains have been linked to form a living computer. If human brains could be similarly connected, it might give us superhuman problem-solving abilities and allow us to send abstract thoughts to each other. “It is really exciting,” says Iyad Rahwan at the Masdar Institute in the United Arab Emirates. “It will change the way humans cooperate.”
“I could send thoughts from my brain to your brain in a way not represented by sounds or words” The work builds on standard brain-machine interfaces – devices that have enabled people and animals to control machines and prosthetic limbs by thought alone. These tend to work by converting the brain’s electrical activity into signals that a computer can interpret. Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and his colleagues wanted to extend the idea by incorporating multiple brains at once. They placed electrodes in the brains of three monkeys, targeting brain areas involved in movement, then connected them to a computer that controlled an animated screen image of a robotic arm. By synchronising their thoughts, the monkeys were able to move the arm to reach a target on the screen – at which point the 8 | NewScientist | 18 July 2015
team rewarded them with juice. Then they made things trickier, restricting each monkey to controlling the arm in only one dimension, for example. But the monkeys still managed to move the arm to the target by working together (Scientific Reports, doi. org/54x). “They achieve the task by creating a superbrain – a structure that is the combination of three brains,” says Nicolelis. He calls the structure a “brainet”. These monkeys were connected only to a computer, not one another, but in a second set of experiments, the team connected the brains of four rats to each other, as well as to a computer. Each rat had two sets of electrodes implanted in regions of the brain involved in movement control – one to stimulate the brain and another to record its activity. The team sent electrical pulses to all four rats and rewarded them when they synchronised their brain activity. After 10 training sessions, the rats were able to do
Matthieu Spohn/Getty
Networked minds could share tasks and even transcend speech, says Jessica Hamzelou
this 61 per cent of the time (Scientific Reports, doi.org/54w). This coordinated brain activity can be used as a computer to perform tasks like information storage and pattern recognition, says Nicolelis (see “Rats with a hive mind”, below). “We send a message to the brains, the brains incorporate that message, and we can retrieve the message later.” This is how parallel processing
Rats with a Hive mind Interconnected animal brains can work as a computer, says Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University in North Carolina. His rat “brainet” (see main story) could perform several computing tasks, such as sending messages and helping forecast rain. In one experiment, the team was able to send information around the brain network. They fed an electrical signal into the brain of the first rat, whose output was sent to the brain of the second, from where it was sent to the third and then looped back to
the first again. “What we’ve seen is that we’re able to retrieve the original message at the end,” says Nicolelis. The team also tried sending weather data to the brainet. They fed electrical signals representing pressure changes to two rats, while another two got signals representing temperature changes. Only when the rats synchronised their brain activity could a computer recover usable data. It could then use the readings to predict the onset of rain with a much higher success rate than chance.
works in computing, says Rahwan, who was not involved in the work. “In order to synchronise, the brains are responding to each other. So you end up with an input, some kind of computation, and an output – what a computer does.” Dividing the task between multiple brains is similar to sharing computations between multiple processors in a modern computer, he says. “This is incredible,” says Andrea Stocco at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not part of the team. “We are sampling different neurons from different animals and putting them together to create a superorganism.” Things could get even more interesting when we are able to apply this to human brains. “Applications become just a matter of what different animals can do,” says Stocco. All anyone can probably ask of a monkey is to control movement, but we can expect much more from human minds, he says. However, we are
In this section n Coal boom means we’ll never hit 2 °C target, page 10 n How red laser turbocharges healing, page 14 n Robot passes self-awareness test, page 18
Fussy eating may have doomed ape-like humans
common problems [using a brainet], it would be a way to leverage the skills of different individuals for a common goal.” This might prove useful in abrasive foods. Instead, it must have IT WAS the first fussy eater. Most surgery, says Stocco. At present, fed on softer C4 plants, like sedges. But ancient hominins ate a broad diet, but only one surgeon in a team is no primate today specialises in eating likely to have control of the scalpel one species specialised on sedges, this kind of vegetation, which is fibrous which might have led to its downfall. at any moment. Imagine each and takes a long time to process. “Could “Australopithecus bahrelghazali team member focusing on one a large-brained hominin be sustained is probably the most enigmatic of all aspect of the operation and by these foods?” asks Macho. coordinating their brain power to the australopiths,” says Gabriele Macho’s analysis of baboons, which control the procedure collectively. Macho at the University of Oxford. Its eat sedges as a part of a broader diet, ancestors strayed from East Africa’s “We are really far away from that suggests the answer is yes – but only scenario, but Nicolelis’s work just. A. bahrelghazali would have got “These ape-like hominins opens up those possibilities for enough energy to maintain its basic got stuck exploring the first time,” he says. metabolic rate, but probably struggled Africa’s wild west as the Nicolelis also develops to build up the energy reserves climate changed” exoskeletons that help people needed for avoiding predators with spinal cord injuries regain Rift Valley – the stronghold of ape-like (Journal of Human Evolution, DOI: movement, and he hopes the 10.1016/j.jhevol.2015.06.009). brainet idea can benefit them, too. hominins – and headed west around Unlike East Africa, though, its new It could allow a more experienced 4 million years ago when the region was wet and dotted with lakes and home was rich in sedges and largely user of a prosthetic limb or forests. By 3.6 million years ago, predator-free, says Macho, allowing wheelchair, for example, to A. bahrelghazali reached what is for a quiet life and a lot of time for collaborate with a novice and now Chad — settling a few thousand eating. Yet such a restricted diet train them to control it for –Are you thinking what I’m thinking?– themselves. kilometres further west than any would have left it more vulnerable to other australopith yet found. extinction if the habitat changed. As Sending thoughts might not unlikely to be wiring up people Macho’s work suggests that on the the climate dried out, A. bahrelghazali necessarily be an improvement like this until better non-invasive on talking, however. “In principle journey west, the hominin adapted in would have become isolated from its a bizarre way. We know from isotope eastern australopith cousins and it methods for monitoring and we could communicate analysis that A. bahrelghazali ate a eventually went extinct. “The idea stimulating the brain exist. information much faster [with diet rich in so-called C4 plants. Grasses that A. bahrelghazali was a lost A device enabling information a brainet] than with vision and branch of hominin that migrated west transfer between brains could, in language, but there’s a really high and tubers are common plants of this type, but Macho says the hominin’s and then got stuck is a very sensible theory, allow us to do away with bar,” says Jason Ritt of Boston flat molars with thin enamel couldn’t one,” says Mark Maslin at University language. “I could send thoughts University. “Our ability to have processed such tough and College London. Colin Barras n from my brain to your brain in a communicate with technology way not represented by sounds or is still nowhere near our ability words,” says Andrew Jackson at to communicate with speech.” The ill-fated journey west Newcastle University in the UK. Sharing thoughts could also The ancestors of ape-like early human A. bahrelghazali migrated west “You could envisage a world leave us vulnerable to new from East Africa. Climate change isolated them from their cousins, and where if I wanted to say ‘let’s go to invasions of privacy. “Once you they eventually went extinct the pub’, I could send that thought create a complex entity [like a to your brain,” he says, although brainet], you have to ensure Fossil site of he adds that linking your brain that individual autonomy is A. bahrelghazali CHAD to Wikipedia might be more protected,” says Rahwan. desirable. It might be possible, for Lake Chad example, for one brain to manipulate others in a network. ETHIOPIA Mental mathematics There’s also the chance that Possible westward migration route The ability to share thought private thoughts might of A. bahrelghazali’s ancestors KENYA could enable us to solve complex accidentally slip through, such problems. “Sometimes it’s really RIFT VALLEY as your intentions after inviting Main fossil sites of most other hard to collaborate if you are a someone to the pub, says Nicholas TANZANIA australopiths are found here mathematician and you’re Hatsopoulos at the University thinking about very complex and of Chicago. “There are lots of MOZAMBIQUE abstract objects,” says Stocco. “If thoughts we have that we you could collaboratively solve wouldn’t want to share.” n 18 July 2015 | NewScientist | 9
Brains wired up to work together TWO heads are better than one, and three monkey brains can control an avatar better than any single monkey. For the first time, animal brains have been linked to form a living computer. If human brains could be similarly connected, it might give us superhuman problem-solving abilities and allow us to send abstract thoughts to each other. “It is really exciting,” says Iyad Rahwan at the Masdar Institute in the United Arab Emirates. “It will change the way humans cooperate.”
“I could send thoughts from my brain to your brain in a way not represented by sounds or words” The work builds on standard brain-machine interfaces – devices that have enabled people and animals to control machines and prosthetic limbs by thought alone. These tend to work by converting the brain’s electrical activity into signals that a computer can interpret. Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and his colleagues wanted to extend the idea by incorporating multiple brains at once. They placed electrodes in the brains of three monkeys, targeting brain areas involved in movement, then connected them to a computer that controlled an animated screen image of a robotic arm. By synchronising their thoughts, the monkeys were able to move the arm to reach a target on the screen – at which point the 8 | NewScientist | 18 July 2015
team rewarded them with juice. Then they made things trickier, restricting each monkey to controlling the arm in only one dimension, for example. But the monkeys still managed to move the arm to the target by working together (Scientific Reports, doi. org/54x). “They achieve the task by creating a superbrain – a structure that is the combination of three brains,” says Nicolelis. He calls the structure a “brainet”. These monkeys were connected only to a computer, not one another, but in a second set of experiments, the team connected the brains of four rats to each other, as well as to a computer. Each rat had two sets of electrodes implanted in regions of the brain involved in movement control – one to stimulate the brain and another to record its activity. The team sent electrical pulses to all four rats and rewarded them when they synchronised their brain activity. After 10 training sessions, the rats were able to do
Matthieu Spohn/Getty
Networked minds could share tasks and even transcend speech, says Jessica Hamzelou
this 61 per cent of the time (Scientific Reports, doi.org/54w). This coordinated brain activity can be used as a computer to perform tasks like information storage and pattern recognition, says Nicolelis (see “Rats with a hive mind”, below). “We send a message to the brains, the brains incorporate that message, and we can retrieve the message later.” This is how parallel processing
Rats with a Hive mind Interconnected animal brains can work as a computer, says Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University in North Carolina. His rat “brainet” (see main story) could perform several computing tasks, such as sending messages and helping forecast rain. In one experiment, the team was able to send information around the brain network. They fed an electrical signal into the brain of the first rat, whose output was sent to the brain of the second, from where it was sent to the third and then looped back to
the first again. “What we’ve seen is that we’re able to retrieve the original message at the end,” says Nicolelis. The team also tried sending weather data to the brainet. They fed electrical signals representing pressure changes to two rats, while another two got signals representing temperature changes. Only when the rats synchronised their brain activity could a computer recover usable data. It could then use the readings to predict the onset of rain with a much higher success rate than chance.
works in computing, says Rahwan, who was not involved in the work. “In order to synchronise, the brains are responding to each other. So you end up with an input, some kind of computation, and an output – what a computer does.” Dividing the task between multiple brains is similar to sharing computations between multiple processors in a modern computer, he says. “This is incredible,” says Andrea Stocco at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not part of the team. “We are sampling different neurons from different animals and putting them together to create a superorganism.” Things could get even more interesting when we are able to apply this to human brains. “Applications become just a matter of what different animals can do,” says Stocco. All anyone can probably ask of a monkey is to control movement, but we can expect much more from human minds, he says. However, we are
In this section n Coal boom means we’ll never hit 2 °C target, page 10 n How red laser turbocharges healing, page 14 n Robot passes self-awareness test, page 18
Fussy eating may have doomed ape-like humans
common problems [using a brainet], it would be a way to leverage the skills of different individuals for a common goal.” This might prove useful in abrasive foods. Instead, it must have IT WAS the first fussy eater. Most surgery, says Stocco. At present, fed on softer C4 plants, like sedges. But ancient hominins ate a broad diet, but only one surgeon in a team is no primate today specialises in eating likely to have control of the scalpel one species specialised on sedges, this kind of vegetation, which is fibrous which might have led to its downfall. at any moment. Imagine each and takes a long time to process. “Could “Australopithecus bahrelghazali team member focusing on one a large-brained hominin be sustained is probably the most enigmatic of all aspect of the operation and by these foods?” asks Macho. coordinating their brain power to the australopiths,” says Gabriele Macho’s analysis of baboons, which control the procedure collectively. Macho at the University of Oxford. Its eat sedges as a part of a broader diet, ancestors strayed from East Africa’s “We are really far away from that suggests the answer is yes – but only scenario, but Nicolelis’s work just. A. bahrelghazali would have got “These ape-like hominins opens up those possibilities for enough energy to maintain its basic got stuck exploring the first time,” he says. metabolic rate, but probably struggled Africa’s wild west as the Nicolelis also develops to build up the energy reserves climate changed” exoskeletons that help people needed for avoiding predators with spinal cord injuries regain Rift Valley – the stronghold of ape-like (Journal of Human Evolution, DOI: movement, and he hopes the 10.1016/j.jhevol.2015.06.009). brainet idea can benefit them, too. hominins – and headed west around Unlike East Africa, though, its new It could allow a more experienced 4 million years ago when the region was wet and dotted with lakes and home was rich in sedges and largely user of a prosthetic limb or forests. By 3.6 million years ago, predator-free, says Macho, allowing wheelchair, for example, to A. bahrelghazali reached what is for a quiet life and a lot of time for collaborate with a novice and now Chad — settling a few thousand eating. Yet such a restricted diet train them to control it for –Are you thinking what I’m thinking?– themselves. kilometres further west than any would have left it more vulnerable to other australopith yet found. extinction if the habitat changed. As Sending thoughts might not unlikely to be wiring up people Macho’s work suggests that on the the climate dried out, A. bahrelghazali necessarily be an improvement like this until better non-invasive on talking, however. “In principle journey west, the hominin adapted in would have become isolated from its a bizarre way. We know from isotope eastern australopith cousins and it methods for monitoring and we could communicate analysis that A. bahrelghazali ate a eventually went extinct. “The idea stimulating the brain exist. information much faster [with diet rich in so-called C4 plants. Grasses that A. bahrelghazali was a lost A device enabling information a brainet] than with vision and branch of hominin that migrated west transfer between brains could, in language, but there’s a really high and tubers are common plants of this type, but Macho says the hominin’s and then got stuck is a very sensible theory, allow us to do away with bar,” says Jason Ritt of Boston flat molars with thin enamel couldn’t one,” says Mark Maslin at University language. “I could send thoughts University. “Our ability to have processed such tough and College London. Colin Barras n from my brain to your brain in a communicate with technology way not represented by sounds or is still nowhere near our ability words,” says Andrew Jackson at to communicate with speech.” The ill-fated journey west Newcastle University in the UK. Sharing thoughts could also The ancestors of ape-like early human A. bahrelghazali migrated west “You could envisage a world leave us vulnerable to new from East Africa. Climate change isolated them from their cousins, and where if I wanted to say ‘let’s go to invasions of privacy. “Once you they eventually went extinct the pub’, I could send that thought create a complex entity [like a to your brain,” he says, although brainet], you have to ensure Fossil site of he adds that linking your brain that individual autonomy is A. bahrelghazali CHAD to Wikipedia might be more protected,” says Rahwan. desirable. It might be possible, for Lake Chad example, for one brain to manipulate others in a network. ETHIOPIA Mental mathematics There’s also the chance that Possible westward migration route The ability to share thought private thoughts might of A. bahrelghazali’s ancestors KENYA could enable us to solve complex accidentally slip through, such problems. “Sometimes it’s really RIFT VALLEY as your intentions after inviting Main fossil sites of most other hard to collaborate if you are a someone to the pub, says Nicholas TANZANIA australopiths are found here mathematician and you’re Hatsopoulos at the University thinking about very complex and of Chicago. “There are lots of MOZAMBIQUE abstract objects,” says Stocco. “If thoughts we have that we you could collaboratively solve wouldn’t want to share.” n 18 July 2015 | NewScientist | 9