Winners Interdisciplinary Project of the spring 2021: Mind Control

On June 9th 2021 the final presentations of the Interdisciplinary Project of the spring took place. Congratulations to Danni, Bernd, Leyla and Clara, their project was chosen as the best! Danni writes about their project below.

Our group did research into mind control and if this could be achieved using existing technologies. We first had to define mind control to be able to form a proper research question. We defined it as making someone physically move without their intention to move, thus leaving out more psychological aspects such as hypnosis or subliminal messaging. We then dove into a project conducted by the CIA in the 70’s, where they tried to make mind control a reality by using drugs such as LSD. They did not succeed in doing so, but we did find an interesting part of this project where researchers implanted electrodes into dog’s brain and could subsequently make them move in designated patterns. This was thus our first indication that electricity could be used to achieve mind control per our definition. We then found recent research into developing so-called brain-brain interfaces. This technology is still being developed, but brain-brain interfaces were successfully established in model rats and even non-invasively between humans. This technology makes use of the electrical signals in the brain, recording them from a ‘sender’ brain, converting these signals into digital information, and delivering them to a ‘receiver’ brain. This led to physical behavioral change and thus fit our definition of mind control. We also found the newly emerging field of neurostimulation, where individual neurons can be exited to induce changes in the brain, even by exiting them with light. During feedback sessions we got the suggestion to dive into the ethics and applications of these technologies, which we included in our final product and elevated our project. Overall, doing interdisciplinary research was very interesting because you learn to look at topics from different points of view, and working together with people from different disciplines was a lot of fun. We are so grateful to have won a lunch at the Basket! And would like to extent our thanks to the IDP commission and supervisors!