"Scientists transmit thoughts" - a phrase which would have befitted the future - but that future may seem nearer than ever with this new study. According to multiple reports, the study where the international team of scientists transmit thoughts was successfully done after one individual was able to transmit his thoughts into the brain of another.  

Long gone are the days like these:

According to Yahoo News, the idea transmitted traveled from India to France, which is a distance of 5,000 miles away. The study where scientists transmit thoughts has been amazingly achieved without invasive surgery on the test subjects. The scientists only had to combine some of the latest technology with the Internet.

Apparently, brain-to-brain transmission has long been a debated topic in the scientific world, according to ABC News.

The website Bustle reports that five years ago, a special cap was created which allowed people to Tweet telepathically. During that time, it was major game-changing breakthrough in science. Also last year, according to ABC News, University of Washington researchers claimed to be the first to have succeeded in telepathy studies as they achieved making one student from one side of the campus move his finger after a colleague thought the command on the other side of the campus.

However, as Bustle said, telepathy may just indeed be here. The new research where scientists transmit thoughts is believed to be a first time that two brains have communicated directly, over a long distance, and without the sender having to say anything.

Conducted by scientists from France, Spain and Harvard University's Medical School, there were four participants in the study where scientists transmit thoughts. They are between the ages of 28 and 50.

How did the scientists transmit thoughts?

Bustle described it as through with a ton of machinery and the magnificence of the internet.

Participants are reportedly hooked up on EEG caps that scan brain activity. Through a technique called electroencephalography, which monitors brain signals from the outside, scientists recorded thoughts from one participant as outgoing messages and sent these thoughts via the internet.

Scientists transmit thoughts by assigning only one participant, who was from India, to transmit a thought, while three others were the receivers of the thought.

The thoughts, or greetings, transmitted were "hola" and "ciao", reports ABC News. Their trip from India to France was deemed successful after a blindfolded and ear-plugged researcher received and spoke them out loud.

According to Yahoo News, the participant from India was shown words which were translated into binary.

A machine called electroencephalogram was used in the study wherein scientists transmit thoughts. The machine was able to capture the brain activity of the participant in India, and converted the letters of the two words to binary code. The codes were then sent to a nearby computer and then over to the Internet and towards the receiver in France.

Eventually, ABC News reports that what the receiver got was enhanced through Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), whereby the electrical signals in a key part of the brain were improved. This reportedly made the receiver aware of a message coming through.

Study co-author Alvaro Pascual-Leone of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School via telephone interview said, "TMS was basically a way to inject the information into the receiver's brain."

It seems that the technology is a non-invasive way wherein scientists transmit thoughts and alter brain functions.

An electromagnetic coil was attached to the skull of the transmitter, enabling him to emit magnetic pulses, and in turn generate electric currents stimulating brain nerve cells.

According to ABC News, the process which enabled the study where scientists transmit thoughts, was already approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2008. It was initially used on patients suffering from severe depression. Back then it was only authorized for use on patients unresponsive to traditional medications.

The scientists reportedly wanted to make sure the receiver knew what the researcher from India, 5,000 miles away, was thinking, because of the transmission, and not just from another cue.

According to multiple reports, the research whereby scientists transmit thoughts was published in "PLOS One", and it was conducted by scientists from Spain, India, France and the United States.

The scientists wanted to prove that telepathy is possible between two humans, said Pascual-Leone via telephone interview.

Pascual-Leone said, "We wanted to find out if one could communicate directly between two people by reading out the brain activity from one person and injecting brain activity into the second person, and do so across great physical distances by leveraging existing communication pathways."

He added, "One such pathway is, of course, the Internet, so our question became, 'Could we develop an experiment that would bypass the talking or typing part of the Internet and establish direct brain-to-brain communication between subjects located far away from each other in India and France?'"

Pascual-Leone also said that "the rational for doing this type of research, at least for us, is to help patients. But could you use some form of noninvasive stimulation, even with people who are unaware, and insert a message into them?"

Adding, "Not the way we have done it, not with technology that's available now, but maybe that's something that could eventually be developed."

According to Quartz, the research where scientists transmit thoughts was in part funded by the European Commission's Future and Emerging Technology program.

But despite the breakthrough from the Harvard team, it also poses a warning to the future. It is indeed valuable for patients with communication problems. However, if misused, it could reportedly have a devastating impact, since it could pave the way for humans to read each others' minds without consent.

Bustle agrees and said that it could change the whole nature of our social interactions. For example - the government hacking into the public's brainwaves, instead of texts.

Pascual-Leone said, "I always worry that as we do this initial step with healthy subjects, even under all the regulatory oversight, that it could lend itself to the fancy of people who just want to play with it."

Meanwhile, the current level of research where scientists transmit thoughts still hold no threat, as the participants needed be hooked up to sophisticated hardware and both were required full, conscious cooperation. They also had to be trained for the task.

But in the study's conclusion, it said there, "The widespread use of human brain-to-brain technologically mediated communication will create novel possibilities for human interrelation with broad social implications that will require new ethical and legislative responses."

Scientists transmit thoughts sound such a new and exciting breakthrough, but the discovery is a double-edged sword.  It could be the start of something immensely good, or extremely bad.