by Seventhsonjr » Sun Aug 07, 2005 10:34 am
As a military veteran and pacifist friend (Vietnam Navy) said to me once, - the things they tell you they have are only what they want you to know. They already have things you can never even imagine. I know. I've seen them.<br><br><br>BBC Website August 7, 2005<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>'Thoughts read' via brain scans</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br> <br>The researchers monitored activity in the brain <br>Scientists say they have been able to monitor people's thoughts via scans of their brains. <br>Teams at University College London and University of California in LA could tell what images people were looking at or what sounds they were listening to. <br><br>The US team say their study proves brain scans do relate to brain cell electrical activity. <br><br>The UK team say such research might help paralysed people communicate, using a "thought-reading" computer. <br><br> We are still a long way off from developing a universal mind-reading machine <br><br>Dr John-Dylan Haynes, University College London <br><br>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. <br><br>The volunteers wore special goggles which meant each eye saw only what was put in front of it. <br><br>In that situation, the brain then switches awareness between both images, sometimes seeing one image and sometimes the other. <br><br>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. <br><br>It was found that focusing on the red or the blue patterns led to specific, and noticeably different, patterns of brain activity. <br><br>The fMRI scans could reliably be used to predict which of the images the volunteer was looking at, the researchers found. <br><br>Thought-provoking? <br><br>The US study, published in Science, took the same theory and applied it to a more everyday example. <br><br>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". <br><br>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. <br><br>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." <br><br>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." <br><br>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. <br><br>But Dr Haynes said: "We could tell from a very limited subset of possible things the person is possibly seeing." <br><br>"One day, someone will come up with a machine in a baseball cap. <br><br>"Then it really could be helpful in everyday applications." <br><br>He added: "Our study represents an important but very early stage step towards eventually building a machine that can track a person's consciousness on a second-by-second basis. <br><br>"These findings could be used to help develop or improve devices that help paralyzed people communicate through measurements of their brain activity. <br><br>But he stressed: "We are still a long way off from developing a universal mind-reading machine." <br><br>Dr Fried said: "It has been known that different areas of the temporal lobe are activated by faces, or houses. <br><br>"This UCL finding means it is not necessary to use strikingly different stimuli to tell what is activating areas of the brain." <br><br> <br> <p></p><i></i>
