Researchers Find Another Way to Read (a Little Bit of) Your Mind

Researchers have previously managed to achieve a limited degree of mind-reading by using electroencephalograms and infrared sensors—in addition to familiar dubious psychic methods—so it was probably inevitable that they would accomplish a similar trick with functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, the brain-scanner of choice in modern neuroscience. Researchers at Vanderbilt University have shown they can use fMRI to determine which of two images people are thinking about. Six subjects were given different patterns to look at—one with horizontal stripes, the other with vertical ones. An fMRI scanner was used throughout the experiment to monitor brain activity in four different early visual areas—the first areas of the brain to receive and process visual signals, which were previously thought to have no role in higher cognitions.... Researchers knew that early visual areas could process in fine detail visual signals from the eye, but thought these areas could not retain information [CBC ...