There is a new technology called MENs, and it could be the breakthrough futurists like Ray Kurzweil have been waiting for; now his predictions that human brain will be made of computer chips by 2030 could easily come to pass. The way the brain works is that complex electrical and magnetic fields and impulses are utilized by the neurons to move information around; thus, if a system is developed that can interact with those electrical and magnetic fields at neuron level, and understand exactly the data carried by the impulses, then the system will very likely allow computer to brain communication or better still, brain to brain communication.

MENs or MagnetoElectric Nanoparticles, are tiny electrical particles that generate both magnetic and electrical fields that have been created by Scientists at Florida International University. The nanoparticles that were injected in the brain of mice have special properties that could allow for computers to talk to the brain directly – or when implanted in two brains, can allow for brain to brain direct communication. The first important property is that “they’re small enough to sidle up to the neural network itself. Within whispering distance, you might say. Secondly, the particles can be triggered by an outside magnetic field to produce an electric field when adjacent to individual neurons. That electric field, researchers say, should be able to communicate directly with the brain’s electric field”, explains Discovery.

This comes at a time when another team of researchers at Harvard University and National Center for Nanoscience and Technology developed tiny bendy and stretchy electronics that can pass through a 0.1 mm needle hence can be injected into the brain using a syringe. Although the core function  of the tiny bendy electronics is to monitor the brain activity, the MENs on the other hand are specifically meant to to “read” information contained in the brain and also send information to the brain. This is because the the nanoparticles can generate measurable magnetic fields in response to the brain’s electrical fields alongside being triggered by an outside magnetic field to produce an electric field when adjacent to individual neurons.

“When MENs are exposed to even an extremely low frequency magnetic field, they generate their own local electric field at the same frequency,”  lead researcher Sakhrat Khizroev told New Scientist. “In turn, the electric field can directly couple to the electric circuitry of the neural network.”

In the abstracted posted at Future Medicine, the researchers reported that the modulated signal reached the strength comparable to the regular neural activity and that the study opens a pathway to use multifunctional nanoparticles to control intrinsic fields deep in the brain.