Thoughts read' via brain scans

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: August 6, 2005 11:09:04 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Thoughts read' via brain scans
Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com


'Thoughts read' via brain scans

Scientists say they have been able to monitor people's thoughts via  
scans of their brains.

Teams at University College London and University College Los Angeles  
could tell what images people were looking at or what sounds they  
were listening to.

The US team say their study proves brain scans do relate to brain  
cell electrical activity.

The UK team say such research might help paralysed people  
communicate, using a "thought-reading" computer.
In their Current Biology study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, people  
were shown two different images at the same time - a red stripy  
pattern in front of the right eye and a blue stripy pattern in front  
of the left.

The volunteers wore special goggles which meant each eye saw only  
what was put in front of it.

In that situation, the brain then switches awareness between both  
images, sometimes seeing one image and sometimes the other.

While people's attention switched between the two images, the  
researchers used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) brain  
scanning to monitor activity in the visual cortex.

It was found that focusing on the red or the blue patterns led to  
specific, and noticeably different, patterns of brain activity.

The fMRI scans could reliably be used to predict which of the images  
the volunteer was looking at, the researchers found.

Thought-provoking?

The US study, published in Science, took the same theory and applied  
it to a more everyday example.

They used electrodes placed inside the skull to monitor the responses  
of brain cells in the auditory cortex of two surgical patients as  
they watched a clip of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly".

They used this data to accurately predict the fMRI signals from the  
brains of another 11 healthy patients who watched the clip while  
lying in a scanner.

Professor Itzhak Fried, the neurosurgeon who led the research, said:  
"We were able to tell one part of a scene from another, and we could  
tell one type of sound from another."

Dr John-Dylan Haynes of the UCL Institute of Neurology, who led the  
research, told the BBC News website: "What we need to do now is  
create something like speech-recognition software, and look at which  
parts of the brain are specifically active in a person."

He said the study's findings proved the principle that fMRI scans  
could "read thoughts", but he said it was a very long way from  
creating a machine which could read anyone's mind.

But Dr Haynes said: "We could tell from a very limited subset of  
possible things the person is possibly seeing."

[snip]

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/4715327.stm

Published: 2005/08/07 00:36:40 GMT

Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>




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