"For the first time, an international team of neuroscientists has transmitted a message from the brain of one person in India to the brains of three people in France. - The team, which includes researchers from Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the Starlab Barcelona in Spain, and Axilum Robotics in France, has announced today the successful transmission of a brain-to-brain message over a distance of 8,000 kilometres.

The team achieved this world-first feat by fitting out one of their participants - known as the emitter - with a device called an electrode-based brain-computer (BCI). This device, which sits over the participant’s head, can interpret the electrical currents in the participant’s brain and translate them into a binary code called Bacon's cipher. This type of code is similar to what computers use, but more compact.

Once uploaded, this code is then transmitted via the Internet to another participant - called the receiver - who was also fitted with a device, this time a computer-brain interface (CBI). This device emits electrical pulses, directed by a robotic arm, through the receiver’s head, which make them ‘see’ flashes of light called phosphenes that don’t actually exist.

Exactly how the receivers are recording the flashes so they can translate all those 0s and 1s isn’t clear, but it could be as simple and writing them down with an actual pen and paper.

While it’s not clear at this stage what the applications for this technology could be, it’s a pretty incredible achievement. Oh, and the messages they transmitted? The conveniently brief and friendly, “Hola” and “Ciao”."
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20140409-26123.html