A computer that can read your mind? This isn't going to end well...
Boffins at the University of California have worked out a technique that makes it possible to read a person's mind by using a computer.
According to the Telegraph, they claim that one day they will be able to record dreams or enable police to identify criminals by recalling the memories of a witness.
Neurologists at the university claim to have matched patterns of activity in the brain with static images seen by the person, and now say it is possible to "decode" these signals.
The experiment used functional magnetic resonance imaging technology to scan the brains of two patients as they watched videos, linking patterns of activity in the visual cortex of their brains with movement and colours in the footage.
This gave a blurry 'mind's eye' version of the footage of the films the patients were watching. Boffins at University College London using separate tests claim they can detect, with an accuracy of about 50 per cent, memories recalled by patients. Which face it is a lot more than most people can remember on their own.
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Issue: 107 | December, 2009