Scientists Achieve Brain-to-Brain Networks, Raising Questions of Shared Consciousness
In a groundbreaking development, scientists have successfully created brain-to-brain networks, enabling multiple people to collaborate using only their thoughts. This remarkable feat, achieved in laboratory settings, transmits intentions at measurable rates of several bits per second. Meanwhile, the question of merging separate brains into one shared consciousness has been raised, challenging our understanding of unified consciousness.
Researchers have demonstrated that modern brain-computer interfaces can read neural signals from thousands of neurons and write information back into the brain with unprecedented precision. This technology has led to the exploration of merging separate brains into one shared consciousness. In controlled experiments, different images were shown to each eye of split-brain patients, sending distinct information to opposite brain hemispheres. This resulted in extraordinary and often contradictory behaviors and explanations, demonstrating that consciousness is a collection of separate neural processes that can operate independently when disconnected.
In 2017, neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero completed an 18-hour head transplant procedure on human cadavers, reconnecting severed spinal cords and major blood vessels. This dramatic attempt at consciousness connection, along with other research, has shown that human consciousness can be artificially divided and reconnected. Participants in brain-linking experiments have experienced genuine alien sensations, suddenly developing urges to move or think in ways that feel completely foreign to their normal decision-making process. Roger Sperry's Nobel Prize-winning research in the 1960s revealed that a single person could literally house two separate, independent consciousnesses after surgical severing of the connection between brain hemispheres.
The technology exists today to create rudimentary telepathic connections between human beings, with implications that are both revolutionary and deeply unsettling. While these advancements push the boundaries of human understanding and interaction, they also raise significant ethical and philosophical questions about the nature of consciousness and individual identity.
