Scientists have now replaced Psychics
A new research carried out at the Carnegie Mellon University, has come creepily close to letting our secrets out. The study headed by Mr.Just, the D.O. Hebb University Professor involves a machine and computer programme which converts brain activity into sounds and words.
Speech activates specific neurons in the brain as it works to interpret the sounds as words and each word activates a slightly different set of neurons. Therefore, the scientists have developed an algorithm that can pick up the activity and retranslate it to words.
“One of the big advances of the human brain was the ability to combine individual concepts into complex thoughts, to think not just of ‘bananas,’ but ‘I like to eat bananas in evening with my friends. We have finally developed a way to see thoughts of that complexity in the fMRI signal. The discovery of this correspondence between thoughts and brain activation patterns tells us what the thoughts are built of.” said Just.
The scientists, in the study, used a custom-built algorithm to allow them analyze fMRI scans to determine what kinds of thoughts triggered what kinds of brain patterns. The algorithm then was used to predict thoughts
for a new brain pattern; the algorithm was assigned 239 sentences and seven volunteers to work with. In the end, the algorithm predicted how complex thoughts like this would be put together in the brain, and vice versa – the types of thought structures based on neural activity. It also identified the building blocks of a thought as it’s shown in the brain and the researchers report that these blocks seemed to be consistent regardless of what the native language or culture of the person was.“A next step might be to decode the general type of topic a person is thinking about, such as geology or skateboarding. We are on the way to making a map of all the types of knowledge in the brain.” Says Just.
Well, this discovery of how brain decodes complex thoughts is certainly exciting, yet there are some (of us) who are creeped out by the thought of scientists eavesdropping on our inner voice.
