Scientists have managed to give a new meaning to the expression: “you’re reading my mind.” They developed the appropriate technology that converts brain activity into an image. And what does this have to do with “you’re reading my mind”?
At the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University in the Netherlands, a research team used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner to see which areas of the brain were active when a person looked at a letter.
An fMRI detects areas of the brain with the most blood flow. From this image, neuroscientists can understand whether a particular area of the brain is responding to some activity or stimulus.
The experiment involved scanning the occipital lobe, an area at the back of the brain where visual information is processed. People in the experiment were shown the letters B, E, A, I, N, and S. The fMRI scan created a dotted image. Then, using a computer program the researchers developed, they were able to translate the dotted image into letters.
The next step will be to use a more powerful scanner, which can "see" the details of an area of the brain ten times more clearly, and provide much better resolution to the computer program that "reads" the volunteer's mind.
The research will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Neuroimage, discovery.com.
