Mind control is the inevitable endgame of just about every user interface. You know, Star Wars-style mind-controlled arms. But what about controlling other beings? Scientists have managed to enable a human to wag rat’s tail with his mind. Bio-drones away.
Researchers at the Harvard Medical School in Boston led by Seung-schik Yoo whipped up the cross-species abomination as a proof of concept for totally non-invasive mind control. All you have to do is set up your human specimen with a EEG monitor, and gun some ultrasonic noise into the motor centre of your rat specimen’s brain. When the humans sees a certain flash on the strobe light in front of him, the whole Rube Goldeberg system triggers, and it’s waggle time.
The strobe light is just a fix for the fact that EEG responses aren’t the most reliable thing out there without a trigger mechanism, so ideally that part could be simplified or completely done away with at some point. But for the moment, leaning on that crutch, researchers were able to hit a 94 per cent success rate with the primitive mind control setup.
What’s next? Mind-controlled rat drones with head-mounted cameras? An army of cyborg meatpuppets? Who knows, but it’s bound to be at least moderately creepy if not full-fledged freaky. Time to don your tinfoil hats. [Popular Science]