Mind reading machine???

[Papahyooie]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1310015/Mind-reading-unveiled-scientists.html

"A computer that can read human minds has been unveiled by scientists.
It translates thought signals into speech through sensors placed on the brain.
Researchers say that in more than eight out of ten cases they were able to work out which word was being thought of without the subject saying it out loud.
They believe the breakthrough could give a voice to paralysed patients who have lost the power of speech.
'We were beside ourselves with excitement when it started working,' said Bradley Greger, a bioengineer who led the research at Utah University."

Pretty sweet stuff. A person in the comments raised the question of being put on one of these things as a "lie detector" when they are more sophisticated. Something to think about. What do you guys think? (get it? :D)

[skotosa]

Pretty sweet and scary stuff.

[jmcslob]

^ Indeed

[DrPepper]

Good stuff if it allows people who cant speak to be understood and know what their thinking. It could also be plugged into people who are in a vegetative state.

[yogurt_21]

Researchers say that in more than eight out of ten cases they were able to work out which word was being thought of without the subject saying it out loud.


8 out of 10 were men, they were shown pictures of boobs, all thoughts were of course predictible.

[twilyth]

They've been doing something similar with fMRI for many years - http://technologyreview.com/biomedicine/20380/?a=f - except it can do much, much more than just identify individual words.

Whatever technique they're using must have some kickass signal analysis software. This will be a lot easier if we could get any kind of room temp or near-room temp superconductor. Then they could use SQUIDs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID) instead of electrodes. With something that sensitive, you can hear individual neurons fart.