Skip to main content

Scientists showcase brain-to-brain communication with game of 3-player ‘Tetris’

In the future, we might be able to use brain implants like Elon Musk’s proposed Neuralink to directly connect both with other electronic devices and human beings; transmitting thoughts through a kind of high-tech telepathy. That’s still a long ways away, but researchers from the University of Washington have passed a milestone on that journey: Creating a BrainNet “social network” of minds which allows three people to send thoughts to one another’s heads. The goal? Playing a game of Tetris, obviously!

Tetris was used as an example of a task where two humans can see the solution but are unable to act, motivating a collaboration with a third human who can act but is unable to see the solution,” Professor Rajesh Rao, one of the researchers on the project, told Digital Trends. “Other games with a similar division of labor could also be used. A game such as Tetris provides a familiar and interesting setting for participants in brain-to-brain collaboration experiments.”

As Rao notes, for this particular demonstration, the idea was to get three people in separate rooms collaborating to play a game of telepathic Tetris. Two of the participants were able to see a screen showing the falling Tetris blocks, which may or may not need rotating in order to fit the row of blocks at the bottom of the screen. The other participant was the only person able to control the game but was unable to see what was happening on-screen. By using brain signals taken from the first two participants via an electroencephalogram (EEG), capable of reading electrical activity in the brain, they were able to trigger LED lights, telling the player what move to make.

Next to the idea of sending complex thoughts to other people, this is relatively basic research — although it lays exciting groundwork for future studies.

“Current brain-to-brain interfaces are extremely limited in the amount of information transmitted between brains, preventing practical applications,” Rao acknowledged. “However, with sufficient advances in brain recording and stimulation technologies, one could imagine networks of connected brains in the future producing innovative and creative solutions to humanity’s most important scientific and societal problems within an ethically responsible framework.”

Linxing Jiang, another researcher on the project, told us that: “We see brain-to-brain interfaces opening up futuristic ways for communication. Such interfaces could also be used by people with brain injuries who are paralyzed and unable to communicate, [since] decoding and encoding information from the brain directly might be the only way for them to communicate.”

A paper describing the research, titled “BrainNet: A Multi-Person Brain-to-Brain Interface for Direct Collaboration Between Brains,” is available to read online.

Editors' Recommendations

Luke Dormehl
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
Tetris Royale brings 100-player battle royale version of classic game to mobile
tetris royale 100 players mobile

The Tetris Company and N3TWORK will be working together to develop new Tetris games for mobile devices, and the first product of the partnership is Tetris Royale.

N3tWORK describes Tetris Royale as a "a fast and fun Tetris game with large-scale friendly competition at its core," featuring the classic puzzler mechanics that have maintained the title's popularity over the years.

Read more
Alexey Pajitnov still hasn’t mastered Tetris, the game he invented 35 years ago
tetris gameboy

Tetris first fell into the hands of players in 1984. Created by Alexey Pajitnov, a Russian software developer living in Moscow at the time, Tetris still has the attention of players almost 35 years later.

It's a simple game with a complex history. Tetris was inspired by a puzzle board game called “Pentominos” which featured wooden shapes comprised of five blocks. Two to three players place the wooden shapes on a board with the goal of being the last player to set a piece down. Tetris tweaked the idea to create the puzzle game players have enjoyed for 35 years.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more