Giulio Ruffini and colleagues at Starlab transmitted the words “hola” and “ciao” in binary code from the brain of a person in India to the brains of three people in France. EEG was used to record the information from the sender’s brain, and robotized transcranial magnetic stimulation was used to deliver the message to the brains of the receivers.

The experiment was published in PLOS ONE last month.

While attached to EEG electrodes, the sender was asked to imagine moving his hands or feet when shown an image that represented a 1 or 0. The data was transmitted to a computer, translated into binary code, and emailed to the recipients’ system. The blindfolded recipients received electric pulses from the robotized TMS system in the visual cortex of their brains, triggering the experience of phosphenes: the perception of seeing flashes of light that are not actually there. They reported verbally when they experienced a flash. This was translated into binary code and then to the message.