Reading minds much easier now

Your thoughts are no longer your own as scientists can now see through your mind.

The online issue of the journal Current Biology, on Thursday, revealed that researchers from Germany, Japan and U.K. have achieved another breakthrough in the field of science by developing a way to decipher people’s thoughts and know their intentions even before they execute the action.

The process includes decoding the brain’s actions by monitoring them through Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) which actually resulted in an accuracy of about 70 percent.

According to study, 8 people were put to trial and asked to add or subtract two numbers in their mind before they were told the two numbers they were thinking of by reading their computed tomography (CT) images. The computer was also programmed to figure out whether the individual was thinking of adding or subtracting the number with the help of the “multivariate pattern recognition” method.

The two kinds of brain activities i.e. deciding whether to add or subtract the numbers and the actual calculation were carried out in the front, called the medial prefrontal cortex, and farther back regions of the brain respectively as confirmed by John-Dylan Haynes from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences who is one of the authors of the study.

Researches have been done on studying the brain while the action is being performed but studying the intentions has been done for the first time.

The technology is debated on the matters of privacy in its use in the crime prevention activities as it may allow abstract thoughts to be read raising controversy on ethical grounds but its advantages extend in clinical fields where it can be used in assisting victims of paralysis. The sophisticated technology can also be used to track the minds of criminals and terrorists imitating “Minority Report”, the Steven Spielberg film in which criminals are arrested before they commit crimes.

This research may even enable to carry out instructions to work on the internet by synchronizing the thoughts of the mind with a scanner picking them up and acting accordingly.

In 2006, a 14 year old teenager played a video game, Space Invaders, with the help of a technique that takes data from the surface of the brain by moving his hands and tongue and then imagining those movements without actually performing them.

Another breakthrough in the field of neuroscience, called Brain Gate, enabled a paralyzed man from neck down to move a cursor on a computer screen, play neural pong and control a robotic arm only with his thoughts.

The mysteries of the mind will no longer be a mystery as the advancement in neuroscience is all set to explore the inner world of mankind.