Researcher Controls Another Person's Brain Over the Internet
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
If the answer is "yes," then this can augment human thinking capabilities -- the rest is just improving bitrates of the human <-> computer channel and writing better software. Both of which are challenging and rewarding research areas, to be sure. But they sound a lot more like straightforward engineering with predictable improvements from research investment, rather than requiring basic research / fundamental discoveries.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a very blunt tool, and, in this case, the "mind reading" is really a binary switch that is triggered by thinking of something that produces a broad, easily detectable EEG pattern.
At best, repetitive TMS (rTMS) can bee used to temporarily make a brain area more or less active.
This is akin to lighting a fire in a jar and claiming you're on the way to invent television.
If the above is true, I believe this technology would be totally do-able. I even hope we can use it to boost our brain, that would be totally awesome.
If this day ever come true, brain security researcher would totally become the hottest job ever :D
A misplacement device or wrong frequency means loss of high level cognitive function (e.g. the patient can't talk, or move part of their body). Hence this type of operation is done with the patient awake, so the surgeon can fiddle with placement and frequency knobs and ask the patient questions in real time. I have seen videos of a person losing the ability to talk, then the surgeon changing something and they can speak again. The surgeon dialled down the device and the patient started shaking from parkinsons, then turn it up and fix the shaking.
All I can say is you must be living in a truly advanced world :)
For "over the Internet" to be interesting, it needs to be pushing then boundaries of the Internet in some way.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation is inherently imprecise and brutish. It causes all the neurons in the target brain area (3-4 cm^3) to discharge at once. Depending on the intensity of the stimulation, you can recruit more or less neurons, but it is not selective.
For most of the brain, it just disrupts the activity for less than a second, causing a "virtual lesion". This is useful for brain mapping research, but that's it.
When you zap the motor cortex, it also sends action potentials down the spine, which in turn stimulate the motor neurons then the muscles.
The hardware is bulky and unpractical [0]. You could maybe use two coils per brain hemisphere, and then, you must stimulate areas distant from one another.
For the foreseeable future the only mind control techniques are propaganda and manipulative behavior, with some drugs sprinkled in for good measure. No need to worry about this.
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=transcranial+magnetic+stimul...
The electric resistance of the skull is way too high to send any useful information through electric stimulation, and magnetic stimulation is inherently blunt.
For the same reason, the complexity of the information that you can get with EEG is very limited. There's a lot of noise, and the spatial resolution is very coarse.
Useful brain to brain communication requires invasive surgery, in order to put sensors and stimulation electrodes next to the cortex. It will happen, and it will be revolutionary, but the method described in the article is not a progress in that direction.