Reading images out of your brain

From NewScientist: Brain scanning can now extract information directly from the brain: the subject read the word "neuron" at the top, and software working with the brain scan images reconstructed the word (below) (Image: Neuron/Cell Press)

Dude, this is way cool:

Now Yukiyasu Kamitani at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan has gone a step further: his team has used an image of brain activity taken in a functional MRI scanner to recreate a black-and-white image from scratch.

"By analysing the brain signals when someone is seeing an image, we can reconstruct that image," says Kamitani.

This means that the mind reading isn't limited to a selection of existing images, but could potentially be used to "read off" anything that someone was thinking of, without prior knowledge of what that might be.

"It's absolutely amazing, it really is a very significant step forward," says John-Dylan Haynes of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany.

(HT: Jay Jonesuu on the Emotivated Facebook group.) Too bad Emotiv's headset can't do this yet.