Scientists Develop Mind-Reading Brain Scans

By K.C. Jones

February 19, 2007

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Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences' Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin recently demonstrated that algorithms, coupled with an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), can determine whether study participants planned to add or subtract groups of numbers.

"It has never before been possible to read out of brain activity how a person has decided to act in the future," a statement from the center explained.

The participants chose one of the two math functions and held the thought in their minds while getting an MRI. The images revealed fine-grained patterns of activity and computers read their covert intentions, before participants received sets of numbers and performed the math problems. The computers, programmed to recognize patterns that commonly occur with specific thoughts, determined participants' intentions 70 percent of the time. The computers use a method called multivariate pattern recognition to pick up brain activity across extended regions to determine what a person has decided to do.

Dr. John-Dylan Haynes, who has done similar research in the past, said during a recent interview that the findings could help paralyzed patients and criminal investigators someday. Technology already exists to help paralyzed patients move computer cursors a step at a time, but the recent findings indicate potential for great leaps ahead, he said.

"With the brain-scanning current technology, you can read out something like left or right," Haynes said. "So, you can control a cursor on a screen of letters. It's powerful and fast, but very restricted and very tedious to click your way through some string of letters in order to spell a word or a sentence. In the future, it will be possible to read even abstract thoughts and intentions out of patients' brains.

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