Mind Reading Could Become a Reality

photo: math2033.uark.edu

(Telgraph.co.uk) By Nick Collins - A device which reads the thoughts of brain-damaged patients could become a reality, scientists claimed, after proving they could tell what someone was hearing just by decoding their brain waves.

In this video, each word spoken to a group of patients by an electronic voice is replicated twice by a computer which analysed the patients' brain waves to 'guess' what they had heard.

Researchers demonstrated that the brain breaks down words into complex patterns of electrical activity, which can be decoded and translated back into an approximate version of the original sound.

Because the brain is believed to process thought in a similar way to sound, scientists hope the breakthrough could lead to an implant which can interpret imagined speech in patients who cannot talk.

Any such device is a long way off because researchers would have to make the technology much more accurate and find a way to apply it to sounds which the patient merely thinks of, rather than hears.

It would also require electrodes to be placed beneath the skull onto the brain itself, because no sensors exist which could detect the tiny patterns of electrical activity non-invasively.

But the proof-of-concept study published in the Public Library of Sciences Biology journal could offer hope to thousands of brain-damaged patients who face the daily agony of being unable to communicate with their loved ones.

Read full story at telegraph.co.uk...