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Scientists 'Read Thoughts' Using Brain Scans

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the my-wife-says-she-can-do-that-naturally dept.

Bruce_of_the_Cosmos writes "Researchers at University College London and University College Los Angeles say that the can 'read' thoughts using fMRI brain scans. While a subject's attention switched between two images, scientists could monitor activity in the visual cortex and accurately determine, among other things, which image the patient was looking at."

5 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Seriously, Seriously... What am I thinking? by timeOday · · Score: 2, Interesting
    So it's not really a useful interrogation means - yet, unless they show the suspect a list of pictures and can objectively determine what thoughts each picture invokes.
    Evoking thoughts sounds neigh on impossible - but I don't think that's necessary. All they have to is get the subject to make various statements, and discriminate between those the subject considers true and false - in other words, just like a polygraph.

    But if, unlike a polygraph, a brain scan could result in an accurate lie detector, well that would have a huge impact on society.

  2. Duh... by FhnuZoag · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well, duh. Guess why they decided to describe this project using such language. In reality, they are probably aiming for a more general understanding of the brain. But that military grant is certainly tempting...

  3. Re:Stereo? by SlashEdsDoYourJobs · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Schizophrenia has nothing to do with split personalities, you are thinking of disassociative identity disorder.

  4. Re:So Much For Tinfoil by Interrupt18 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Most MRI measurements are extremely sensitive to any metal/magnetic material in the image field of view. If you had any metal near your head (a bobby pin or a paper clip, etc), it would destroy the image, assuming it didn't get pulled off by the magnet. As for tinfoil, the article doesn't say what field the magnet is, but it's probably between 3 and 7 tesla (128-300 MHz). At those frequencies, the skin dept of aluminum is small enough that you wouldn't be able to see anything through the tinfoil.

  5. Sodium Pentathol aka Truth Serum Works Today by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sodium pentathol aka "truth serum", and other various drugs/methods, already allows one today to determine quite well what one is thinking / knows.

    Technology may eventually the authorities, or whoever, to get an idea as to what one is looking at / possibly thinking of at a given moment from a distance; appealing to marketers, but may be of limited usefulness to authorities, since people's thoughts can be so random / common to what others are thinking - even the most law abiding people have various deep, dark thoughts, but most don't act upon them.

    In a nutshell, reading one's thoughts isn't all that useful until one acts upon them - and for many types of actions, that is impossible to trully determine for sure ahead of time due to the randomness of nature; chaos theory.

    Ron