New Algorithm Can Read Your Mind, Shows Study Using Brain Imaging Technology

Now brain imaging technology can read what’s going on in your mind by using machine learning algorithm developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania. The new algorithm can ‘read minds’ and identify complex thoughts with 87 per cent accuracy, they claim.

Since the brain’s building blocks for complex thoughts are formed by various sub-systems and not language-based, by measuring the activation in each brain system, the new technology can decipher what kind of thoughts are being contemplated and relay them to the monitors.

“We have finally developed a way to see thoughts of such complexity in the fMRI signal. The discovery of this correspondence between thoughts and brain activation patterns tells us what the thoughts are built of,” says Prof. Marcel Just of Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, where it was developed.

Based on their study, they could predict the features of the left-out sentence, with 87 per cent accuracy, even among those who were never exposed to its activation before.

“Our method overcomes the unfortunate property of fMRI to smear together the signals emanating from brain events that occur close together in time, like the reading of two successive words in a sentence,” Just said. “This advance makes it possible for the first time to decode thoughts containing several concepts.”

The study has been published in the journal Human Brain Mapping.