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Comment by d--b | Hacker News Reader

This is a little weird. Why would you use a Tetris like game for this? There is only one bit sent.

It’s also quite hackish. To select yes or no, they have to look at some flashing lights the scientists know are going to generate different patterns in the brain. So it’s not like the guys are thinking “yes” and that’s being transmitted.

Similarly the receiver’s brain is being stimulated kind of randomly by electrical impulse.

It’s basically electrical communication but where the transmitter and receiver are wired in unsual places in the brain...

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Of course it’s hackish. The technology is still somewhat rudimentary. They’re stimulating the visual cortex and the only way to do that (or stimulate brain areas in general) in a non-invasive way is using TMS, which isn’t “pinpoint” accurate. It’s shooting a strong magnetic pulse to stimulate the surface of the brain through the skull. Since TMS doesn’t have deep penetration for the receiver and neither do the electrodes for the senders, they’re limited to surface areas of the brain.

The places are not unusual.

In terms of the senders, it would probably have been easier to simply use an eye tracking camera to gauge which one they were looking at, but it wouldn’t have been “brain-to-brain”. We’re still a LONG ways off from telepathic-like communication. We’re also a long ways from even picking up “yes” or “no” signals from people’s thoughts. It’s still an important achievement nonetheless to get such readings from the senders and to make such manipulations to the receivers conscious visual perception, even if it’s not measuring conscious thought or creating a specific image.

> We’re also a long ways from even picking up “yes” or “no” signals from people’s thoughts

Yes and no. No because even though the tech exists, it's not exactly ready for the masses and doesn't work 100% and usually needs calibration and isn't exactly comfortable to wear. Yes because technology allowing people to form words on a computer by picking individual letters based on just EEG exists already; so that's more then yes/no. Likewise there's the experiments to have people move robot arms etc. (i.e like Neuralink from Musk, which isn't really new). You can even already buy commercial games where you control a cursor on the screen based on just 2 electrodes.

Yeah I think think the decoder is not state of the art for non-invasive decoders.

The encoder may be? (But I believe we can do a lot better with invasive encoders though)

So the novel thing is really combining an decoder and an encoder.

My understanding is that what musk is doing isn't new in the sense of novel but new in the sense that he's pushed the refinement of the technology to the outer envelope.

Which is a pattern with him (and a good one) in that he takes existing tech and pushes it to the outer envelope, batteries, motors and rockets all existed long before musk was born but he's done valuable and interesting things with them.

Someone had to make a technology for for market.

new in the sense that he's pushed the refinement of the technology

That's what I understood as well. For example there's a mutlitude of practical problems with current in-brain electrodes, ranging from limits in the amount of them, their lifetime, lifetime of connectors, surgeries being quite difficult, possible problems with infections etc. None of them are extremely hard to solve but it basically requires a ton of money being thrown at and that seems to be Musk's plan, allowing to get like 3000 electrodes with the preamp/digitizer stage implanted subcutaneously.

I was referring to detecting and distinguishing signals when someone is simply thinking of the word yes or no, similar to what you would expect from telepathy. But like I said in my previous comment, it’s an important step nonetheless for many reasons.

What you're describing is simply detecting attention, not conscious thought (e.g. inner voice), which is what I was referring to.

Feels like you're trying to downplay this but that's not really correct imo. Ok the individual parts of the experiments (stimulation, decoding EEG) aren't exactly new but for the rest I think it's quite novel (might be wrong though)? Why Tetris? Why not? It's not because only one bit gets sent now that they don't want to go any further. Also don't forget this maybe took years of preliminary research before they got something working. In those years they might have been using something else the switched to Tetris for publicity. Wrt being hackish: other commenter addressed that already; if you think this is hackish you'd be surprised what has been going in in neuroscience for the past decades.

> It’s basically electrical communication

Well, yes, that's the whole point.

Indeed, it's a nice setup but it's not what you expect from the title.

You cannot put on a cap with three people and then start playing a game of Tetris by thinking and imagining alone. The game is on a screen for everyone. The block must be rotated or not, that's it. To decide or send a decision, participants must make a very conscious action to look at a specific flashing light. To interpret the signals, the participant must be paying attention to the occurrence of strange flashes in his eyesight.

What bothers me a little too with the pumped title is that, as far as I know, there is very little novelty here. All the interfaces were already developed. So what do we gain from this experiment?

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