Scientist Develops Method to Read Minds






Stephen Hawking communicates using a clever computer program
especially designed for his needs.  Note the small sensor on Professor
Hawking's right cheek. 
Today, physicist Stephen Hawking communicates using those few muscles his brain still controls, with winks and twitches that are interpreted by a computer and the guesswork of those around him. His mind is trapped. If there were a way to directly capture the electrical signals in his brain to say or write what he is thinking as he thinks it, it would free him from the perpetual guessing game that he and his assistants now endure.  Hawking is not alone in this inability to communicate.

There may be not a cure for Hawking's paralysis, but one day soon there may be a method for him to communicate directly with the world around him based on the discoveries neuroscientist Irina Simanova made during her PhD work at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Simanova has shown that by identifying and measuring brain activity using existing technology that the electrical signals produced in your brain do show whether you are thinking about an animal or a tool. In other words, she found a way to know what you're thinking before you say it, knowledge that could be used to develop practical tools to convert brain signals into speech. And establishing a scientific base for research into the existence of ESP, a favorite of science fiction writers world wide.

Think of a cat
Using existing machines, an Electroencephalograph (EEG) to measure electrical activity in the scalp and Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow, Simanova is the first to show that if you think of a cat the same neurons fire in the brain as when you say the word cat.

"This shows that there is a common neural component for images and words within one category", Simanova explains. "That is interesting knowledge for scientists who develop tools to convert brain signals into speech."

These measurements work because our memory for word meaning is stored in specific small areas of the brain.  When you think of a non-living object like a tool, specific neural cells in the brain become active. In contrast, when you think of something living, such as an animal, that thought is processed by a different set of neurons.

Predicting speech
Simanova also used Magnetoencephalography (MEG), a non-invasive neurophysiological technique that measures the magnetic fields generated by neurons as they occur, tried to predict the category of a word that the test subject had yet to say, succeeding in 65 percent of trials.

"A nice result," Simanova says, especially because this was an explorative study. Of course, ideally we aim for 100-percent correct predictions." Her next step is to study more objects within a single category. 'In the current study, we used very mainstream objects, for instance cats and dogs. Now I want to find out if the same principles apply for exotic species, like naked cats.'

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKILkw_XfLs

Related posts:




*  *  *  *  *
Story Source:  Materials provided by Radboud University Nijmegen. "Conceptual representation in the brain: Towards mind-reading?." ScienceDaily. 17 April 2014.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How the lives of Georgian gaolbirds and highwaymen shaped modern Britain

Image
Writing historical fiction requires solid research of available materials and databases.  The key word here is available.   So news of a new publicly accessible database that allows an author to research a very interesting past era is priceless almost beyond words.   I expect some exciting fiction to come out of this announcement. Here's the story, with a link to the source in the attribution. *  *  *  *  * London Lives, a landmark project led by Professor Bob Shoemaker from the University of Sheffield and Professor Tim Hitchcock from the University of Sussex, has uncovered a mass of extraordinary new evidence which reveals how the lives of thousands of 18th-century poor and criminal Londoners helped shape modern Britain. Based on evidence made available in a publicly available database, the study sheds new light on the everyday lives of thieves, prostitutes, vagrants, highwaymen, con-men, paupers and jailbirds, revealing how their daily fight for survival led to t
Read more

An unexpected way to recover from a breakup

Image
Breaking up is truly hard to do. And recovery from a breakup can be even harder. Your friends may counsel you to put the whole thing out of your mind. But new research suggests that repeatedly reflecting on a break-up -- even through participation in a research study -- actually speeds emotional recovery. "Breakups are ubiquitous -- most adults have experienced at least one in their life -- and are typically very distressing," says Grace Larson of Northwestern University. After studying divorce and breakups for years using longitudinal, multi-method designs, Larson and her then-adviser David Sbarra of the University of Arizona wanted to study whether these research techniques on their own were affecting participants. One concern they had was that the studies could be harming participants, Larson says. "At first glance, it might seem like repeatedly reminding participants that they had just broken up -- and asking them to describe the breakup over and over --
Read more

Greek Bronze Age ended 100 years earlier than thought

Image
Source: www.shef.ac.uk The charred remains of Assiros Toumba in Greece. Writing historical fiction set in the Greek Bronze Age?  Or simply enjoy reading this genre'?  Here's a study you may find interesting. C onventional estimates for the collapse of the Aegean civilization may be incorrect by up to a century, according to new radiocarbon analyses. While historical chronologies traditionally place the end of the Greek Bronze Age at around 1025 BCE, this latest research suggests a date 70 to 100 years earlier. www.weather-forecast.com Archaeologists from the University of Birmingham selected 60 samples of animal bones, plant remains and building timbers, excavated at Assiros in northern Greece, to be radiocarbon dated and correlated with 95.4% accuracy using Bayesian statistical methodology at the University of Oxford and the Akademie der Wissenschaften Heidelberg, Germany. Researcher Dr Ken Wardle says, 'These new results tell a story that is totall
Read more

Mood Instability and Your Characters

Image
You're putting together a character who's mood simply bounces all over the place, happy one moment, in a fit of rage the next.  Researchers at King's College London note that this sort of mood instability is part of a number of mental health disorders.  So how do you structure the personality and behavior of a character like this?  Below is the King's College report, along with a brief description from mentalhealth.com, of typical behavior, sometimes in the extreme, of a person who is very emotionally unstable.  This is offered strictly as a guide for crafting character in fiction - and NOT for the amateur diagnosis of the state of someone's mental health.  That is always best left to trained professionals. Another note about emotionally unstable behavior:  as any parent will tell you, this is how adolescents and teen-agers often behave.  It's a normal part of growing up - but it is a matter of degree .  In the extreme, however, this behavior can be diag
Read more

Remember faces but not names? You got it wrong.

Image
Source:   Daily Excelsior So, you think you're good at remembering faces, but terrible with names? New research has revealed we are actually better at remembering names than faces The cringe-worthy experience of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name leads many of us to believe we are terrible with names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. With the Christmas party season fast approaching, there will be plenty of opportunity to re-live the familiar, and excruciatingly-awkward, social situation of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name. This cringe-worthy experience leads many of us to believe we are terrible at remembering names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. The authors of the study, from the University of York, suggest that when we castigate ourselves f
Read more