You might’ve heard that Facebook Inc. is working on a way for you to message your friends and update your news feed...telepathically.

When the company announced this at its annual F8 conference in mid-April, it was pretty vague about how the feat would be accomplished. Turns out the plan includes building a technology that would, by itself, revolutionize how we study the human brain.

Are the methods crazy? Yes. Do neuroscientists and engineers outside Facebook express extreme doubt this will succeed? Yes. Facebook doesn’t care and is investing millions in research that could produce a consumer gadget.

After I spoke with project members, based at Facebook’s mysterious Building 8 incubator for moonshots, it became clear that the company’s larger goal is to make a handful of long-term bets on technologies that could define the next era of computing.

When your face is stuck inside a VR headset or you’re out walking around wearing a pair of augmented-reality glasses, you can’t exactly reach for a keyboard or mouse, says Mark Chevillet, a physicist and neuroscientist who is Facebook’s technical lead on the as-yet-unnamed project.