Twenty Questions is a simple game of yes or no questions. But that simple game gets a lot more complicated when the players don't speak to each other and their responses are taken strictly from their brain signals.
That's what a group of researchers at the University of Washington set out to accomplish. They used a non-invasive brain-to-brain interface (a fancy way of saying they transmitted signals without digging into either person's brain) to have a player ask the question of another person, see that person respond, register that response, and so on.
The process used electroencephalography (EEG) to read the brain signals of the responder, as it can broadly tell the difference between the brain patterns for "yes" and "no." They then use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to send the response to the person who asked the question. Basically, it uses magnets to stimulate the asker's brain in such a way that they should see a light for yes, but they should not for no.
Five pairs of askers and responders overwhelming demonstrated that they could win the game and accurately determine a specific item using the brain-to-brain interface. Which is pretty amazing: After all, even understanding the simplest "yes" or "no" is still reading someone's brain.
Source: CNET
