Mind reading!

Neuroscientists at the UC Berkeley have used functional MRI technology to determine what someone is looking at just by analyzing their brain patterns.

Others have done this in the past using neural networks, but never with images. Haynes et al. (2007) had participants perform mental addition or subtraction and record what brain activity is occurring first. Then, participants were given numbers and they were able to choose whether to add or subtract, then they gave their answer. Post hoc analyses (long after participants were out of the scanner) lead to neural network models being able to predict using brain activity alone whether participants added or subtracted the numbers.

Gallant and colleagues (2008) have used similar methodology. Participants first had to view objects so researchers could determine brain patterns, then they were able to match up future brain patterns with past scans. While it’s not pure mind reading (since you need prior knowledge), it’s still pretty impressive.

This is good, because bad people don’t have a big database of scans involving brain patterns of previous knowledge. So evil doers will not be able to stick anyone in an fMRI and read their thoughts, thankfully. At least, not yet.