Telepathic Rats

"Rats with electrodes implanted in their heads can send information directly from brain to brain, even from different continents."

The experiment, out of Duke university, has 2 rats with electrodes implanted in the motor cortex of their brains separated into 2 identical cages. In both cages are two levers, only one of which dispenses water (the consequence of pushing the other one is not stated), with a light that goes off as a cue that it is the correct level. Only the first rat sees the correct cue though, and the information is sent via the electrodes into the second rat's brain.

In the end it is reported that the second rat was able to push the correct level 85% of the time, a result that they researchers are claiming indicates is was able to receive and interpret the signal from the first rat.

Here's a link to the article on popular mechanics.

The next step is to try to achieve the same results for different tasks, and with different parts of the rat's brain, as a precursor to eventual human trials.

On one hand this is fascinating, but on the other this kind of thing freaks me out. Scientists are quick to point out the potential benefits of a more 'efficient' way of communicating information between people, such as saving lives during an emergency situation. On the other hand, as a species we are too prone to herd mentality, and information cascade behavior to not be exploited should a technology like this be commoditized and marketed. (My rather long winded commentary is here).

That is very interesting. It reminds me of the hundredth monkey theory.

The hundredth monkey effect is a supposed phenomenon in which a behavior or thought spreads rapidly from one group to all related groups once a critical number of initiates is reached. By generalization it means the instantaneous spreading of an idea or ability to the remainder of a population once a certain portion of that population has heard of the new idea or learned the new ability by some unknown process currently beyond the scope of science.

It's not telepathy and it's being discussed.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Phage


Synthetic telepathy then.

Depends on your definition. Cambridge dictionary has a relatively open entry for telepathy:

the ability to know what is in someone else's mind or communicate with them mentally, without using words or other physical signals

This sounds to me like a mentally amplified form of communication.

And sorry for the duplicate post, the fact that I couldn't find any threads on this when searching for telepathy may be proving your point.