Researchers have designed a new brain-to-brain interface that allows communication between two individuals wordlessly and remotely over the Internet. Participants, during the study, were seated almost a mile apart on campus.

The University of Washington researchers, Andrea Stocco and Chantel Prat, said results of their groundbreaking mental ‘20 Questions’ study were published Wednesday in PLUS One.

Stocco, an assistant professor of psychology, said, “Evolution has spent a colossal amount of time to find ways for us and other animals to take information out of our brains and communicate it to other animals in the forms of behavior, speech and so on”.

Stocco and Prat translated thoughts into flashes of lights. The duo separated pairs of participants into two darkened rooms almost a mile apart from each other.

One of the participants, the respondent, donned an electrode cap connected to an electroencephalography (EEG) machine that records electrical brain activity.

The other participant, the ‘inquirer’, sat in front of a magnetic coil capable of stimulating his visual cortex to cause him to see a flash of light known as a phosphene, which can look like a blob, a wave or a thin line.

The respondent was given an object on a screen to focus on, while the inquirer was given with a list of possible objects and a list of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions. The inquirer has just to click on a question to send it to the respondent's screen.

To answer, the respondent looked at either the word ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on his screen. The EEG reading associated with either answer would send a signal to the coil behind the inquirer's head. Flash of light means it’s a ‘yes’ and no flash means a ‘no’.