The brain scan that tells you exactly what's on your mind By David Derbyshire
Last updated at 12:04 PM on 19th February 2009


Scientists have developed a mind-reading technique that lets them peer into someone’s head - and predict what they are thinking.
In tests using brain scanners, researchers were able to guess correctly which one of two images a volunteer was thinking about 80 per cent of the time.
It is the latest in a series of studies designed to show how scans can reveal our innermost thoughts.
The experiment used a fMRI - or functional magnetic resonance imaging - scanner, normally found in hospitals.
Dr Stephanie Harrison, who led the study at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, in the U.S., showed six volunteers different patterns on a computer screen while their brains were being monitored.
One of the images was of a striped circle with almost horizontal stripes, while the other was a circle with near vertical stripes.
As the images were unveiled, different parts of the volunteers’ brains lit up. After they had seen both pictures, the group were then asked to remember one of the images.
Simply by looking at the patterns of brain activity, the scientists were able to predict accurately which of the two circles they had been trying to remember, the journal Nature today.
Dr Harrison said: 'Accuracy greatly exceeded chance-level performance of 50 per cent and proved highly reliable in the six participants.'

In a separate study last year, scientists in California asked volunteers to look at 1,750 images - and then used MRI scanners to predict correctly in nine out of ten cases which images they were thinking off.
At the time, lead researcher Dr Jack Gallant warned: ‘It is possible decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications.
‘We believe that no one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading involuntarily, covertly, or without informed consent.’
MRI scanners use a powerful magnetic field and radiowaves to detect the flow of blood around the brain.
Some experts believe that the technology could pave the way for a mind-reading device that creates instant images on a screen showing the objects or scenes the subject is thinking or dreaming about.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1149224/The-brain-scan-tells-exactly-whats-mind.html

i can't read my own mind....how is anyone else going to?

sorry...i'll shut up now

Our beloved gov't government is always at least 20 years ahead in technology than what it admits to...

So if they really wanted to, sure... but I'm sure they don't waste the tax payers' money on reading everybody's mind all the time...

...or do they?

Works w/ two images. Think of all the thousands of items and concepts and possible combos of thoughts. I don't think they will ever get there. Throw cultural differences and how that influences how people view and interpret the world into the mix and it is even that more unlikely to work.

Why couldn't they get there? Is the brain not just a biological computing system in its own right?

Could they not take brain waves and create algorithims that in turn can be used to develope this orwellian technology...


"Our beloved gov't government is always at least 20 years ahead in technology than what it admits to..."


Very true, How long did we have the stealth bombers before they became "public" knowledge?

WarMachine,

If you're gonna quote me, please feel free to correct my embarassing typos and grammatical errors. I repeated gov't twice, one abreviated, one not!

Anywho, yeah... although the brain is the most complex organ of the human body, just in the last century we have begun making breakthrough discoveries about its functions and design.

Does the gov't already possess a man-made functional organic computer, in other words an artificial human brain? We'll know in a few decades...

And for all those who believe that the US gov't discloses everything to the public... WRONG! In the interest of national security! the gov't has been keeping many secrets from its citizens, and will continue to do so even more inthe 21st century, thanks to Bush and the new homeland security issues he helped create for us...

I agree, too complex. They don't even really know how it works completely yet.

Does the Government keep secrets? 2 words for you, Area fifty-one.

Well they won't get much from my brain. It would probably read out like this:

kittens-cat-porn-boobs-kittens-Warcraft-Xbox-StarOcean4-StreetFighter4-kittens-mingle2-porn-books-sleep-push-trash-cart-around-to-look-busy

If the gov't was reading my mind right now, they would know that I was craving fried chicken and waffles!

Yeah baby...

Two, big reasons why this does not worry me at all:

1. The brain's complexity is its own safeguard, as others have said. It is absurdly complex--to the point that its very structures and functions are ambiguous to us; how could the government ascertain coherent meaning, clear and consistent (none of this "80% of the time guessing which of two images someone would choose" nonsense) interpretations of thoughts, if it does not even fully understand the brain's makeup?

2. MRI scanners are huge. Unless the government abducts a person to directly scan his or her brain, I doubt we have anything to worry about, at the moment. It's not as if they have remote MRI technology (and even if they do, the previous "reason 1" still stands immovably).

So yeah.

"Big-Brother"-esque society--"Thought crimes" and the like--seems pretty far off, for the moment.

...and that is precisely what they want you to think!