Lifestyle

Scientists hit by a brainwave

November 05, 2009 Edition 1

A MIND-reading machine that can produce pictures of what a person is seeing or remembering has been developed by scientists.

The device studies patterns of brainwave activity and turns them into a moving image on a computer screen.

While the idea of a telepathy machine might sound like something from science fiction, the scientists say it could be used to solve crimes one day.

In a pioneering experiment, an American team scanned the brain activity of two volunteers watching a video and used the results to recreate the images they were seeing.

Although the results were crude, the technique was able to reproduce the rough shape of a man in a white shirt and a city skyline.

Professor Jack Gallant, who carried out the experiment at the University of California, Berkeley, said: "This technology might allow you to recover an eyewitness's memory of a crime."

The experiment is the latest in a series of studies designed to show how brain scans can reveal our innermost thoughts.

Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, usually found in hospitals, the team scanned the brains of two volunteers while they watched videos.

The results were fed into a computer which looked for links between colours, shapes and movements on the screen and patterns of activity in the brain.

The computer software was then given the brain scans of the volunteers as they watched a different video and was asked to recreate what they were seeing.

The software was close to the mark, said Gallant, who has yet to publish the results of the experiment.- The Daily Mail