Reading other people’s thoughts with a scan? Not so far-fetched, as technology is getting us there:
Scientists say they can read a person’s unconscious thoughts using a simple brain scan.
Functional MRI scans plot brain activity by looking at brain blood flow and are already used by researchers.
A team at University College London found with fMRI they could tell what a person was thinking deep down even when the individual was unaware themselves.
The findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, offer exiting new ways to probe the subconscious, said experts.
In the experiment, Dr Geraint Rees and Dr John-Dylan Haynes measured brain activity in the visual cortex – the part of the brain that deals with information sent by the eyes – while volunteers looked at different test objects on a computer screen.
By looking at the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan results, the scientists were able to predict what had been displayed on the computer screen better than volunteers themselves.
When two images were flashed in quick succession, the volunteers only consciously saw the second one and were unable to make out the first.
But the brain scans clearly distinguished the patterns of brain activity created by the “invisible” images.
Read more at the BBC…