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Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking

Posted by Zonk on from the totally-not-thinking-about-sheep dept.

neurospace writes "Caltech scientists have successfully decoded movement plans from the brains of awake humans. This work has direct application to the development of a neural prosthesis, a brain-machine interface that will give paralyzed people the ability to move and communicate simply using their thoughts. The lead scientist on this project will be interviewed on Sunday, March 20, on the SETI Institute's weekly radio show, 'Are We Alone?'"

19 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hmmm.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Or maybe it exactly has

  2. Possible other uses by Bs15 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if this new science will be used to prove the guily or innocent in crimes?

    1. Re:Possible other uses by peculiarmethod · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think we can all agree that the legal system has lots of laws in the very gray category.. the very reason we have many court systems, as interpretation is a delicate subject requiring, excuse the phrase, "a village to raise a child (law)".

      This technology may be used to further the success rate.. but prosecution will always hold the risk of damning an innocent.

      --
      ** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
    2. Re:Possible other uses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      You terrorist perverts better clean up your minds, pronto!

    3. Re:Possible other uses by 80+85+83+83+89+33 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      sometimes when people are being confronted by an authority figure they feel like they have to be on the defensive, which inturn can be interpreted as acting as guilty.

      hell, half the time the psycho owner of the company i work at is so suspicious of her employees that we feel guilty even when we haven't done anything wrong, just because she acts like we did. then she thinks we are guilty because we are acting that way. catch-22.

      --
      i disable sigs
    4. Re:Possible other uses by oliverthered · · Score: 2, Interesting

      sometimes when people are being confronted by an authority figure they feel like they have to be on the defensive

      When was the last time a cop stopped you, gave you a bunch of flowers and told you you were a model citizen?

      Isn't it their job to make sure people are being as nice as possible to each other?

      --
      thank God the internet isn't a human right.
    5. Re:Possible other uses by vidnet · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Don't think about polar bears!

      See, now you can't avoid thinking about it. Just replace "polar bears" with "the body I buried in the yard" and you can see how problematic that can be.

  3. Language by lachlan76 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Good as this is, what I'm really waiting for is a way to tap into the language center. Imagine: an interface which can work, regardless of the language spoken by the person. No more need for translation, everything could be held in a form identified directly by the brain.

    But I doubt this will happen in my lifetime.

    1. Re:Language by lachlan76 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well personally I'd rather the US have a president who isn't going to "liberate" the entire world.

      But maybe that's because i'm in another country.

  4. Should be interesting... by nbharatvarma · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If we could find the mechanical outcome of what we think when we listen to music.

    --
    ... and I shall strike upon thee with great vegeance, furious anger and a slightly positive karma.
  5. It's not that hard by Scorillo47 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You have to detect the presence of a few general classes of thoughts: up/down. left-right. With only these two dimensions you can then do anything. But this is still far from being real "thought reading".

    --
    Don't try to use the force. Do or do not, there is no try.
  6. The brain's adaptive powers... by zalas · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since the brain seems to adapt its structure to suit its environment (such as giving someone partial "vision" by stimulating their back with an array of little elements which correspond to the pixels on a camera), won't it mean that different people will have slightly different "wiring" for this to totally work on everyone? On the other hand, since the brain is somewhat adaptive, maybe you can get the brain to adapt or to learn to communicate with the target electrode areas...

  7. Question is... by Skal+Tura · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Will this be able to help in other kind of inabilities?

    I'm not sure about the english name, but i think it is in english also CP inability.

    My friend born so that he is inable to correctly move his legs & arms or anything at all, because his nervous system has sustained damage. I'm not sure about the specifics, because we don't talk about it for obvious reasons.

    The thing is, his mind is capable of moving correctly etc. but his nervous system & body isn't.
    Badly spasmic etc which makes it even harder.

    He needs someone to help him with everything, he can't even goto WC by himself.
    He is fortunate enough that his hands etc. work enough to use a computer, eat by himself, even write somehow.

    But would this help him to move to more independent life?
    Those of which know better, what you think?

    --
    Pulsed Media Seedboxes
  8. Ghost in the Shell by shaman0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if some far day it will end up in some way similar to Ghost in the Shell?

  9. My Idea... by polyp2000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have had an idea for years, Im not sure if it is possible technically or phsyically because I dont have a fantastic understanding of the human brain. I also have no idea whether anyone has thought of this before but here goes.

    One of the nice things about neural networks is that you dont neccesarily have to understand processes that occur during translation. I have often hypothesised that it might be possible to use the traits of a neural network to create an interface with the brain. Suppose there was a patient who had a degenerative eye condition that meant in 10yrs he or she would be completely blind. Forgetting the implications of connecting wetware to hardware for a moment- imagine if we could use a neural network to interface with the visual cortex of a patient , to learn to understand the electrical impulses on the patients visual cortex by way of matching them up with a camera mounted on the side of the head. Might it be possible for the patient to look at a tree using his real eye - the nueral network sees the tree with its camera and this way "Learns" what the patterns in the cortex represent.

    Something like this (if it is possible) would have some quite phenomenal implications - especially if it were possible to "playback" the patterns into the cortex from the camera.

    Would anyone who knows a bit more about these subjects care to discuss the possibilities of something like this?

    --
    Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
    1. Re:My Idea... by argent · · Score: 4, Interesting

      We already have a neural network that can be used to play back patterns into the visual cortex. It's called the visual cortex. It turns out there's a straightforward mapping from the visual field to parts of the visual cortex, and they've got quite useful results using both directly implanted electrodes and external stimulation. More amazingly, the brain can actually learn to "see" through completely different pathways. One experiment involved an aray of pins on the patient's back!

      Not that it's not an interesting idea, but vision is probably too easy a problem to be worthwhile. Hearing may actually be harder.

  10. They all know what you think... by webgrappa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...in only 20 questions! :) http://www.20q.net/

  11. Homeland security and terrorism by Danathar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I bet the spooks over at homeland security are looking at this as a way to tell when somebody is lying (reliably).

  12. Time, July 1, 1974 by argent · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This article reminded me of something I stuck in my scrapbook back in high school. Amazingly enough, I was able to dig around and find it...

    Mind Reading Computer

    The experiment looks like some ingenious test of mental telepathy. Seated inside a small isolation booth with wires trailing from the helmet on her head, teh subject seems deep in concentration. She does not speek or move. Near by, a white-coated scientist intently watches a TV screen. Suddenly, a little white dot hovering in the center of the screen comes to life. It sweeps to te top of the screen, then it reverses itself and comes back down. After a pause, it veers to the right, stops, moves to the left, momentarily speeds up and finally halts - almost as if it were under the control of some external intelligence.

    The article goes on to describe the work of S.R.I. researcher Lawrence Pinneo in translating thoughts to action. Googling on his name in interesting.

    Did this take 30 years to get from Stanford to Caltech?