People who are called “vegetables”, that is being sustained in a vegetative state, unable to move a finger, even the eyes. They were also considered to be fully unconscious, while Adrian Owen, who is currently working at Western University in London, Canada, did not examine the brains of people in vegetative state by using an fMRI scanner and asked them to imagine playing tennis. His team first demonstrated that some of these people are still “there”, their consciousness and mind are not corrupted.
Team Owen and others now are working to create portable devices for reading minds, which would have helped these people to communicate. MRI machines filled a whole room, so the portable devices are using EEG-electrodes on the surface of the skull, worn as a cap. Latest device Owen uses vibrating pads on each arm, and the man in an apparently vegetative state are encouraged to pay attention either on the left or on the right side of the pad, answering “no” or “Yes” to the question.
The desire to develop technologies for mind reading has a wider application than this specific clinical setting, and in recent years methods have been developed, allowing to determine what one hears, reads or thinks, to some extent. New Scientist offers go through this list.
Transcript of sense
In 2012, Joao Correia of Maastricht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues found an interesting way to find out if the activity in the brain associated with the meaning of the word. They used bilingual volunteers and recorded their brain activity on an fMRI scanner while they listened to the names of the four animals — bull, horse, shark and duck in English. Were able to determine characteristic patterns of the brain for each animal. The same patterns were replicated when the volunteers heard the names of those same animals in the Dutch language. Therefore, the concept of meaning called words the brain is reproduced. Once we learn to decipher whole sentences in real time, says Correia.
Eavesdropping on the inner voices
To listen to you, you need to talk quieter. Patterns of brain activity today, can you tell me what is your quiet inner voice. Certain neurons in your brain are activated in response to various properties of sound such as frequency. In 2014, the group under the leadership of Brian Pali from the University of California in Berkeley have developed an algorithm that can decode the patterns of neural activity and determine what sounds the brain responds. They asked seven people who had brain implants to treat epilepsy, to read out loud the text of the “Gettysburg address”, writing at this time, the activity of their brains, and used the algorithm that determines which patterns of brain activity which correspond to the words. The researchers then asked people to silently read the text to ourselves and were able, with the help of algorithm to determine what words people are reading. It will be some time before all this technology will fit in a single device, but researchers hope that one day she will allow to communicate to people who can’t do it physically.
Desires and free will
Delicious coffee? Just think about it, and the robot will do it for you. This can be one of the consequences of the development of brain implants that can decipher desires. In 2015, Richard Andersen of the California Institute of technology and his team implanted a pair of tiny electrodes to two people in the posterior parietal cortex. They recorded the activity of hundreds of individual neurons, and the computer translated. For Eric the Variety he translated his desire into the movement of a robotic limb. The second person is able to recognize the desire when he tried to resolve the prisoner’s dilemma.
Music teacher
Whether you are a musician or a student, you have at least once thought about the fact that there must be an easier way of learning. Maybe it will come true. In 2016 the best Yuksel and Robert Jacob of tufts University in Massachusetts have developed a BACh — Chorales Automated Brain — which helps people learn, measuring how strong the activity of their brains. On the man’s forehead are the sensors that measure oxygen levels in the prefrontal cortex, and the subject is offered for study only when the levels fall, showing that you are ready to receive new information. The researchers tested their device on students-pianists, who trained faster and more accurately using BACh.
Print the power of thought
In February of this year, Jamie Henderson, neurosurgeon, Medical center at Stanford University, and his colleagues reported that three people with paralysis learn to type using only their thoughts and brain implant. Silicone pouch dotted with hundreds of electrical sensors that were implanted in primary motor cortex — the part of the brain that controls movement. Then people thought about moving different parts of his body, and the computer translated those thoughts into cursor movement on the screen. During the day the participants learned how to control the cursor and to print up to eight words per minute.
Five technologies that can read your thoughts, and examples of their use
Ilya Hel