MIND READERS

What if mental telepathy was as simple as pulling on a cap and plugging into a colleague? PAUL BIEGLER reports on the laboratory experiments that are melding – and blowing – minds.

What if mental telepathy was not just a science fiction concept, but as achievable as pulling on a cap and plugging in? PAUL BIEGLER taps into the team of scientists in the US who are sharing their thoughts on the future of mind sharing communication – in more ways than one.

One afternoon in the 1980s a small boy sat in a house in Hyderabad in southern India watching television. There wasn’t much on but one show had captured his attention. It was Star Trek, and on that particular afternoon, Dr Spock was bent over a prostrate man. The man was an intruder on the Starship Enterprise trying to warn the crew of danger, but whenever he tried to speak he writhed in pain. Spock puts his hands on the man’s temples and says, in a mesmerising voice, “Open your mind. We move together, our minds sharing the same thoughts.” This was, as any Trekkie will know, the Vulcan “mind meld”, which Spock used to seamlessly access the man’s thoughts and learn of a dangerous machine.

That little boy was exceptionally bright, won a scholarship to study in the US and is now co-director of the Centre for Neurotechnology at the University of Washington. His name is Rajesh Rao and he’s had a fixation on the mind meld ever since, because he thinks if we could invent something just like it we might solve a fundamental problem with the design of humans.