Mind-Reading Machine Could Someday Replace Keyboard
- Posted on September 6, 2011 at 9:54pm by
Liz Klimas
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Mind-reading devices could make carpal tunnel a thing of the past by eliminating the need for a keyboard.
According to the Princeton University release (via Innovation News Daily), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans show activity in the brain associated with certain words:
“The long-term goal is to translate that brain-activity pattern into the words that likely describe the original mental ‘subject matter,’” Matthew Botvinick, a psychologist at Princeton University’s Neuroscience Institute, said. “One can imagine doing this with any mental content that can be verbalized, not only about objects, but also about people, actions and abstract concepts and relationships. This study is a first step toward that more general goal.
“If we give way to unbridled speculation, one can imagine years from now being able to ‘translate’ brain activity into written output for people who are unable to communicate otherwise, which is an exciting thing to consider. In the short term, our technique could be used to learn more about the way that concepts are represented at the neural level — how ideas relate to one another and how they are engaged or activated.”
An MRI machine can takes brain scans, which researchers are using to track activity associated with certain thoughts (Image Editor/Flickr via Live Science)
Technology like this is still years in the making, and if and when it’s available, it will first be used to help people who are completely paralyzed. Innovation News Daily reports that current technology to help those who cannot communicate due to paralysis includes that which allows the patient to select letters with their eyes to form words and a prototype that uses synthesized voices to create sound from thoughts, though not yet actual words.
The Princeton researchers, delving further into technology of creating words from thoughts, found that fMRI brain scans showed patters when thinking about objects such as horse or house. The scans were also used to identify words that were related to topics:
. . . thinking about “eye” or “foot” showed patterns similar to those of other words related to body parts.
While brain scans can in a relatively easy manner, track brain activity that is associated with images, thoughts and words associated with those images and subjects can be more difficult:
“Someone will start thinking of a chair and their mind wanders to the chair of a corporation then to Chairman Mao — you’d be surprised,” said Francisco Pereira, lead author of the study. “The brain tends to drift, with multiple processes taking place at the same time. If a person thinks about a table, then a lot of related words will come to mind, too. And we thought that if we want to understand what is in a person’s mind when they think about anything concrete, we can follow those words.”
Building off of already established research of brain scans taken from volunteers looking at images and words, Pereira and his colleagues collected topics from thousands of Wikipedia articles using a computer program developed by Princeton professor. Objects in the articles ranged from airplanes to heroin to birds to manual transmission. Related topics to these objects were then generated. Researchers looked at the brain scans to find similar activity for a certain topic to establish common brain patters for a whole subject. They produced color-coded figures that illustrate the probability of words within the Wikipedia article about the object the participant saw during the scan actually being associated with the object.
The more red a word is, the more likely a person is to associate it, in this case, with "cow." On the other hand, bright blue suggests a strong correlation with "carrot." Black and grey "neutral" words had no specific association or were not considered at all. (Illustration courtesy of Francisco Pereira)
[H/T Live Science]
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gmoneytx
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 12:24pmOK, what am I thinking right now???
Report Post »UlyssesP
Posted on September 8, 2011 at 10:05amObama sucks?
Report Post »HTuttle
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 8:47amGreat! Now we’ll ALL be locked up for our thoughts!
Report Post »Dr Vel
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 12:06amLets see, work with my head stuck in a 50 ton machine or type? Carpal tunnel here I come.
Report Post »AB5r
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 11:34pmWhat would Obama sound like hooked up to this?
Report Post »jb.kibs
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 12:10amlike this
“where’s the teleprompter?where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”where’s the teleprompter?”"
Report Post »4truth2all
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 7:15pmThink it might look like this
Report Post »………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Ghandi was a Republican
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 11:29pmCan it operate a teleprompter?
Report Post »jb.kibs
Posted on September 7, 2011 at 12:12amwhy? are you the poor bastard who has to type all “douchebag”s speeches onto the prompter? :P
Report Post »Rayblue
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 11:00pmIn the early 70′s, people from the Rhine Institute traveled America experimenting with Bio-Feedback.
Report Post »They would place leads on the heads of volunteers and show a specific brainwave pattern to the subject. The subject would then attempt to manipulate the pattern by thought.
In the 90′s, Clinton forced the release of classified material pertaining to the advanced research on mind control and remote viewing which were the evolved results of the early Bio-Feedback tests.
All this has led to the machine in this article. Although I don’t believe it is the high result it is presented to be. Other more complicated machines exist but are considered too erratic for common use.
Ron_WA
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 10:59pmI’m a bit leery of this technology (stay out’a my brain); I prefer the current tech which allows one to use voice input or eye movement & blinks to hit key-strokes.
Report Post »abbygirl1994
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 10:53pmI can see us women are going to have problems, unlike men who can’t do more than one thing at a time.. women can multi task and multi think.. I can see us overwhelming the system only to make it burn and crash. My husband is always amazed that I can multi task.. So its obvious that a man probably made this machine!
Report Post »AB5r
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 10:51pmMost people who post on forums like these have to phrase or even censor their thoughts very carefully, just imagine if what you were actually thinking was posted, unedited, verbatim! Now that would be interesting.
Report Post »TomFerrari
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 10:46pm“brain PATTERS”???
Did you mean “PATTERNS?”
interesting, but EXPENSIVE research.
Wait a minute, let me pull my MRI machine out so I don’t have to type?
Report Post »LOL
Ookspay
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 10:32pmIf it can read, it can write, I’ll pass.
Report Post »endgamer
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 10:30pmI can see it now.. Banning violent rhetorical thoughts. I could definitely write for Penthouse Forum with my mind! I would probably make them a bit sticky too.. Anybody got a towel?
Report Post »I.Gaspar
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 10:23pmSince the scan would read brain activity, does it mean that biden could never use one?
Report Post »Exrepublisheep
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 10:11pmCarpal brain damage.
Report Post »Captain Crunch
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 10:10pmFantastic new tool for law enforcement to stop crime before it happens. Round up all those Tea Partiers, conservatives, patriots, republicans, and Christians. Make them face the mind sucking brain machine which promises to silence discent before they can open their mouths to insult our fearless leader. Lobotomies-R-US.
Report Post »Mateytwo Barreett
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 10:06pmUnless the political stuation in this country changes. . .I don’t think this is a very good idea!
Report Post »vennoye
Posted on September 6, 2011 at 10:20pmWill never work! People could NEVER get their posts through the censors………..
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