• Question: would it be possible to develop tellacanetic powers

    Asked by fatpigeon2 to Ben, James, Jen, Michael, Susanna on 12 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Jen Todd Jones

      Jen Todd Jones answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      Hi fatpigeon

      At the moment it’s not believed that we can develop telekinetic* powers, that word comes from the old Greek words ‘tele’ meaning ‘far away’ and ‘kinetic’ meaning ‘movement’. The brain is a separate physical structure to the outside world, while it may seem as though the objects around us are part of our world (and they are), they cannot be controlled by our brain which is a separate object. It’s a cool idea but all of the electrical activity of the brain happens inside the skull and can’t get outside it, so we can’t change anything outside the head with our brain sadly! It would be cool though huh!

    • Photo: Susanna Martin

      Susanna Martin answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      Just to add on to this, some researchers are exploring how we could use our thoughts to control things, for instance work at Bristol Uni (http://big.cs.bris.ac.uk/projects/bci) has been looking at how you could control a shape on a computer screen by concentrating. They use head sets to monitor the brain and then tell the computer to respond based on certain signals. Similarly other researchers are looking at how we could control prosthetic limbs with our brains, so while it’s not quite telekinetic we are finding ways to control things

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