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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2245 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Scientists Have Connected The Brains of 3 People, Enabling Them to Share Thoughts

I talked to one of the guys who founded the UW institute for Neuroengineering (which three of the six authors are associated with) backintheday about exactly this maybe 15 years ago. The argument was that coarse manipulation of the brain was easy but fine manipulation was extremely difficult because of problems of resolution. At the time, coarse manipulation was something they figured they weren't going to get to try because of concerns over cell phone radiation. Looks like they finally decided to make a run at it...

    Participants playing the role of the Receiver came in for two consecutive sessions. During the first session, as part of informed

    consent, they were asked to complete a TMS safety screening questionnaire, aimed at identifying potential conditions (such as

    family history of seizures or frequent migraines) that might represent potential risk factors for adverse side effects of TMS.

    No participant was rejected for failing the safety questionnaire. In addition to the safety screening, all Receivers underwent

    a procedure to determine their absolute phosphene threshold, that is, the minimum amount of stimulation necessary to elicit

    the perception of an induced phosphene 100% of the time. The absolute threshold was assessed using the PEST method25

    .

    During both the testing session and the experimental session, TMS was delivered through a 70-mm Figure-8 Alpha coil

    (Magstim, UK) positioned over the left occipital lobe, in a location corresponding to site O1 in the 10-20 system. The coil was

    positioned flushed to the head, with the handle parallel to the ground and extending towards the left. The coil was attached to a

    SuperRapid2 magnetic stimulator (Magstim, UK). The maximum intensity of the electric field for our TMS equipment is 530

    V/m, and with our coil, the maximum intensity of the induced magnetic field is 2.0 T.

2T is in the regime of MRI.