Researchers emphasized the experiment reads only simple brain signals, not thoughts, and cannot be used on anyone unknowingly. Bryan Djunaedi/University of Washington handout

Scientists said Tuesday they have completed the first human-to-human mind meld, with one researcher sending a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motion of a colleague sitting across the Seattle campus of the University of Washington -- an achievement one of the researchers jokingly referred to it as a "Vulcan mind meld."

"The Internet was a way to connect computers, and now it can be a way to connect brains," said Andrea Stocco, of the university's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. "We want to take the knowledge of a brain and transmit it directly from brain to brain."



The feat is less a conceptual advance than another step in the years-long progress that researchers have made toward brain-computer interfaces, in which electrical signals generated from one brain are translated by a computer into commands that can move a mechanical arm or a computer cursor -- or, in more and more studies, can affect another brain.

Much of the research has been aimed at helping paralyzed patients regain some power of movement, but bioethicists have raised concerns about more controversial uses.

In February, for instance, scientists led by Duke University Medical Center's Miguel Nicolelis used electronic sensors to capture the thoughts of a rat in a lab in Brazil and sent them via the Internet to the brain of a rat in the United States. The second rat received the thoughts of the first, mimicking its behavior. The experiment raised dystopian visions of battalions of animal soldiers -- or even human ones -- whose brains are remotely controlled by others.

Electrical activity in the brain of a monkey at Duke, in North Carolina, was also recently sent via the Internet, controlling a robot arm in Japan.

Some of Duke's brain-computer research, though not the aforementioned studies, received funding from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA.

