By now, you may have heard about research where one rat's brain is connected to another (over a considerable distance) in order to see if one rat's knowledge (the "encoder" that is learning to lever press to get water) will transfer to the other rat (the "decoder" rat). The mass media has picked up this story with one account provided by BBC News; see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21604005 And everyone's all-time favorite source, the NY Times; see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/science/new-research-suggests-two-rat-brains-can-be-linked.html
The original research article can be read here: http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130228/srep01319/full/srep01319.html I'm going to wait until this research is replicated before saying anything about it with respect to Brain-to-Brain communication in rats or humans or other species. However, I do give props to the authors for citing Ralph Hartley's 1928 article on the measurement of information which would be one of the influences for Claude Shannon's work on Information Theory (NOTE: it is now recognized that information theory is a branch of mathematics and that the traditional measure of information expressed in bits is due to the use Base 2 logarithms in its calculations but one could use other bases such a "e", that Naperian constant in which case the unit of information is called a "nit" or one could use Base 10 logarithms which has a unit of information called the "Hartley" named after you know who). So, when Brain-to-Brain communication is possible in humans, will people rush to get this type of hook-up or would such a connection maybe provide way more information than (a) a person want to reveal, and/or (b) another person wants to know. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=24028 or send a blank email to leave-24028-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
