News Archive

‘Telepathic’ communication featured in BBC Christmas lecture

Technology designed to provide a link between brain and computer has been featured at the annual BBC Christmas lecture at the Royal Institution today (27 December 2017), allowing one participate to seemingly communicate telepathically with another.

The experiment which aired on BBC Four was set up by researchers* from the University of Reading’s Brain Embodiment Lab and the FES research group, saw a 15-year old girl send messages wirelessly to her mother who was based in another room and could received the messages via electrodes on her skin.

Professor Slawomir Nasuto, Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading who helped to set up the experiment said:

“It was really interesting to link two existing demos that we have run before – to create the ability for someone to create movement in another individual by thought, and a computer interface, alone. The exciting thing for us is the potential health applications, and colleagues at the University of Reading will now exploring using this technology to help with spinal-cord injury to potentially gain muscle movement using their own brain activity.”

Watch the lecture on the BBC iPlayer at:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09l5lg1/royal-institution-christmas-lectures-2017-the-language-of-life-2-silent-messages

Find out more about research on spinal cord injury rehabilitation here:
http://bel.reading.ac.uk/

Find out more about the Royal Institution’s Christmas Lecture 2017 here:
http://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures/2017-the-language-of-life/about-the-language-of-life

*(Ms. Maitreyee Wairagkar, Dr. Ioannis Zoulias, and Prof. Slawomir Nasuto)