Two weeks ago, Professor Rajesh Rao sat in his lab at the University of Washington wearing a cap studded with blue and green electrodes. He thought about pressing the spacebar on his computer keyboard to fire a cannon in a video game. And as he thought that, Andrea Stocco, a colleague sitting in another lab on the university’s campus, involuntarily pressed his own keyboard’s space bar.

A video of example trials from a pilot study of direct brain-to-brain communication in humans conducted by Rajesh Rao, Andrea Stocco, and colleagues at the U of Washington, Seattle.

Dr. Rao and Dr. Stocco have created what is believed to be the world’s first noninvasive human brain interface, which uses existing, but still cutting-edge, technology in a novel application. The experiment represents what the scientists call a forward movement in a fast accelerating field that aims to help us manipulate the world with just our brains.

‘We wanted to show proof of concept,’ says Stocco, referring to the idea that it is possible for one human mind to connect to and instruct another. ‘We’re not aware that anyone else has made a noninvasive brain interface between humans.’