Brain-computer interfacing (BCI) is a technique to provide a means of communication through brain activity alone, in those with severe communication difficulties such as those suffering with “locked-in” syndrome. Brain activity, detected from electrodes glued to the scalp, is decoded to understand communication instructions. In the past we have used the so-called motor-imagery (MI) based BCI to steer the direction of a motorised wheelchair (see Figure 1) through thought alone, as can be seen here

In May of 2009 our BCI laboratory performed and recorded a simple proof-of-concept experiment whereby, for the first time, we showed rudimentary brain-to-brain (B2B) communication. We did this by bringing together two well known BCI paradigms and combining them over an internet link to allow information extracted from one person’s brain to be transmitted and detected off the brain of another.