Some believe that the time has come to connect two (or more) brains together to transfer information from one brain to another, much as we do routinely by transferring files between computers. This idea was piloted by hooking up two rats such that unit recordings from the neocortex of one rat performing an operant task was used to trigger neural responses in the neocortex of a second rat by way of electrical stimulation to affect the operant behavior of that rat (Pais-Vieira, Nicolelis et al. 2013). After assessing the information transferred, it was found that less than 0.02 bit per second were communicated between the rats, which explains why the effects observed were barely significant (Tehovnik and Teixeira e Silva 2014). Indeed, the experiments of Pais-Vieira, Nicolelis et al. were inferior to those used by neuroscientists to activate the brain electrically to enhance or perturb the operant behavior of animals (Tehovnik 2024). Furthermore, an information transfer rate of under 0.02 bits per second is many orders of magnitude below that needed to perform language at a rate 40 bits per second which can be done by using word of mouth (Tehovnik and Chen 2015), a type of brain-to-brain transfer with which we are all familiar.
A shortcoming of hooking up two or more brains, i.e., neocortices, to transfer information is that this type of transfer bypasses the body, i.e., the sensors and the muscles (Tehovnik and Chen 2015), even though the aim is to store the information in the activated brain to bring about a registration of new learning by the transfer. By bypassing the inputs and outputs of the body, the amount of control over a subject’s behavior is greatly diminished, as is evidenced by the failure of neocortically localized brain-machine interfaces transferring under 3 bits per second (or under 8 possibilities per second) versus peripherally-localized interfaces such as the cochlear implant transferring up to 10 bits per second or 1,024 possibilities per second (Tehovnik et al. 2013; Tehovnik, Hasanbegović, Chen 2024; Tehovnik and Teixeira e Silva 2014). The high transfer rate by a cochlear implant explains why it has been successful in restoring language function to the hearing impaired. More than half a million patients worldwide support a cochlear implant (NIH Statistics 2019).
The idea of working with the brain bypassing sensory channels is not new (the idea of telepathic influence, etc.). However, I believe that the electrical activity of neurons in one brain, which has already received information from sensors and processed it, transformed into electrical stimuli (signals) for transmission to other neural networks in another brain, bypassing its sensory channels, cannot result in the transfer of information. Rather, it can be an invasive focal electrical stimulation of another brain with signals of certain properties. The neural network that processes information is very tightly synchronized in time, and the temporal sequence of information processing stages creates a "channel purity and protection effect" from other noise. Humanity is not yet able to interfere with this channel from the outside or to impose a stage of processed information that would be embedded in the processing chain (as if a virus puts part of its dna or rna into the cell cycle) using current technologies. Especially since information processing is distributed throughout the brain, and not located in one place. Of course, if you electrically stimulate the neurons responsible for the contraction of the arm muscles, the effect of transferring the command signal is possible, since it is a simple behavioral biological act. But in this case, it has nothing to do with information processing.
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