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Scientists Inch Closer to Mind Reading

by Terrence O'Brien on June 1, 2008 at 11:45 AM


Scientists are getting closer and closer to reading your thoughts. Of course, the method uses expensive MRIs, which the subject must be completely still for, and can easily fool by thinking about something other than the target objects.

This is, however, a major advancement for researchers who are able to identify nouns a person is thinking about, even if the model for reading the patterns has never encountered the word before. The scan works by seeing what verbs are associated with the noun by sensing activity in the areas of the brain associated with different senses.

By developing a complex catalog of over a trillion nouns cross referenced with a hand full of simple verbs the computer models were able to predict what the brain scans would like for a given word. A person would then be shown two words and asked to think about one. The computer would take an image of the persons brain scan and compare it with its predictions to generate a guess as to which word the subject was thinking about. The model guessed correctly 77-percent of the time.

The method is far from perfect, but it is the first time that a clear link between the words we use and our neural activity has been shown. [Source: The Guardian]

Tags: language, mind reading, MindReading, research, science

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