Scientists Build Mind-Reading Computer

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed what they are calling a "mind reading computer." Using a panel of nine volunteers, the team built a "profile" of 58 test words based on brain scans taken while the volunteers were directed to think about the meaning of each test word. "'If I show you the brain images for two words, the main thing you notice is that they look pretty much alike. If you look at them for a while you might see subtle differences,' explains Tom Mitchell of the Machine Learning Department, which lead the study. 'We believe we have identified a number of the basic building blocks that the brain uses to represent meaning. These building blocks could be used to predict patterns for any concrete noun,' added Mitchell."

Words chosen

[Intron (870560)]

The list of words chosen were: funding, grant, tenure, award, patent, contract, ...

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[bloodninja (1291306)]

The list of words chosen were: funding, grant, tenure, award, patent, contract, ...

It doesn't matter what words they choose. OCZ beat them to market.

This one actually does read minds

[ericspinder (146776)]

OCZ beat them to market.

No, that one reads facial expressions.

Slashdot already knew about this submission

[Jeremiah Cornelius (137)]

By reading his mind, before ScuttleMonkey approved it.

How do you think that subscribers get that "Mysterious Future" stuff, anyways?

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[lattyware (934246)]

It is meant to do both.

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[CrazedWalrus (901897)]

Mind-reading computer trifecta is in play.

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[PopeRatzo (965947)]

I've got a feeling the words involved in this project were more along the lines of "Department. Defense. Homeland. Security. Surveillance."

well that doesn't work

[ILuvRamen (1026668)]

All you have to do is have a different connotation for the word and it doesn't work. The gays stole rainbows so now if people see a picture of a rainbow, they have a distinctly different reaction to it. Or you could purposely make yourself feel angry or sad or do a complex math problem as you're thinking of the word and it would throw the machine off. To get this to work I'd bet they have to tell you to stay calm and what to think about beforehand, during, and after they try to predict what word you're t

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[Facegarden (967477)]

Not necessarily... If there truly are key areas that only deal with actually thinking about a noun, they should be unaffected by other brain processes like emotion, etc. One may be off daydreaming about that summer when they "experimented" with the neighbor boy in college, but the actual word "rainbow" is still sitting somewhere in his mind. ;)

I would, however, be inclined to believe that our brains are more complex than just having "areas" that have "activity" when certain things happen. Until we can map

Excellent!

[jimand (517224)]

Now that a computer can read my mind I'm waiting for the mind-reading 'puter that knows to change the mouse focus when I look at a new window. I hate looking at one window while typing in another, especially when posting to /. while I have a window open with an email to my boss. It turns out he's not interested in the goatse link.

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[kalirion (728907)]

So you've never been looking at some data in one window while typing the description of the data in another?

And so it begins..

[multipart/mixed (163409)]

..THIS is the basis for yet-another-trek-related-invention: the Universal Translator.

I always knew it had to work this way.

Re:And so it begins..

[the_humeister (922869)]

That's an interesting idea. Do different words that mean the same in different languages light up the same areas of the brain when a person thinks about it? Would a Spanish person who is told to think of "coche", have a similar brain scan of an English person told to think of "car"?

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[zappepcs (820751)]

Doubtful actually, at least in all cases. In English, nova has one or two meanings that may bring different thoughts. In some Spanish speaking countries, they might be thinking 'no go' or some option for various value of go in Spanish.

Grammarians unite! Only those who understand language will be able to interpret the results of this machine.

It is quite interesting that there are parts of the brain that light up uniformly (or near it) for some processes. Puts the human brain more in the land of machine with

Re:And so it begins..

[lbgator (1208974)]

I think the GP is onto something a little different than what the parent interpreted. Language may be an unnecessary step in this experiment.

If someone is thinking "gee - I would love a hamburger" in English - would their brain scan be the same as a French guy thinking the same? If you started at some basic level (hunger, thirst, anger, love, pain) is there a common denominator in all brain activity? If there is commonality, can we hope to someday eliminate language and have comms come straight from the source?

Re:And so it begins..

[why-is-it (318134)]

Would a Spanish person who is told to think of "coche", have a similar brain scan of an English person told to think of "car"?

Agreed. I suspect that true mind reading will be impossible because everyone will have different internal representations of concepts and ideas. Even amongst individuals who speak the same language, we should not assume that everyone will have the same representation of "car", even though people may have similar levels of brain activity in the same parts of the brain when they think about one.

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[Feanturi (99866)]

And then you put a person who was born blind into the MRI and ask them to think about a car. Now what?

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[locallyunscene (1000523)]

This reminds me of a psyche 101 exercise where students were asked to draw a map of the town in which the college resided. Upperclassmen drew far more detailed maps than freshmen. I suspect the upperclassmen would have thought of very different things(past experiences) compared to freshmen also, and that's within a very small subset of people. I doubt very much that this machine could "read your mind" primed with someone else's input, but it could be invaluable in determining how the brain works and what s

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[Danny Rathjens (8471)]

I don't think so. Nearly all words have several meanings; especially in English. The connections between words would also be different because in addition to relating words semantically we also relate words to each other by their sounds. So, aside from strong cognates, the connected graph of word relations looks quite different in different languages. I think only very basic proto-indo-european-ish words like mother and milk could match across languages.

I would suggest..

[vorlich (972710)]

that the word "fanny" will light up two rather different regions of the brain depending on which side of the Atlantic you were born.

Wonder...

[ShiNoKaze (1097629)]

I have to wonder all this work we do towards reading minds, what's everyone gonna think when they figure out how much we really do think about sex? Cuz damn.

Might be fun to watch the expressions on the scientists face as they realize what's going on tho. "That guy was a fluke, the next will about something else I'm sure!"

As dangerous as it is useful

[dmccarty (152630)]

This is why passwords by themselves are fundamentally unsafe. Anyone typing a password "thinks" about the next character they're about to enter just before they type it. If concrete nouns can be can be scanned while the subject is entering the password, things as basic as the letters of the alphabet and the numeric system would be dead ringers for remote password stealing.

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[Drakonik (1193977)]

Yeah, but I dunno how easy it would be to use social engineering to convince people to sit underneath an FMRI so you could scan their brain while they type in their bank's PIN number.

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[Shikaku (1129753)]

I remember my password by keyboard location by my fingers.

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[CastrTroy (595695)]

That's why you need real 2 factor authentication. Something you know, and something you have works well. So that even if somebody peeks over your shoulder (or into your brain), to figure out the password, they still don't have access.

Re:As dangerous as it is useful

[ceoyoyo (59147)]

Sure!

Here, would you please lie down while I slide you into this multi-tonne magnet. Thank you. Now, please lie very still and think about typing in your password, very slowly, one letter at a time. No more than one letter every ten seconds or so! Now please repeat a couple dozen times. Thank you for your cooperation.

I think it would be easier to just ask.

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[ceoyoyo (59147)]

There are just a few physical limitations on fMRI technology.

The most important for this topic is that fMRI scanners measure changes in BLOOD FLOW. They do not measure electrical activity. The flow response is delayed by about three to five seconds and has a certain minimum time duration. Therefore the requirement to enter the password r...e...a...l...l...y s...l...o...w...l...y.

Secondly, in order to get any recognizable imaging signal at all (and if you want to measure letters you're going to need a REA

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[madstork2000 (143169)]

I think it is dangerous in a lot more serious way.

Basically the thing can read a brain scan, what if they develop the technology to stimulate the brain to produce a predefined brain scan. I.e. implant a thought pattern.

I for one welcome our new mind-reading

[davidwr (791652)]

Hold on, just got handed this printout:

"Thank you, but we already knew you were going to say that.

Sincerely,

Your new mind-reading computer overlords."

Re:I for one welcome our new mind-reading

[Eudial (590661)]

Hold on, just got handed this printout:

"Thank you, but we already knew you were going to say that.

Sincerely,

Your new mind-reading computer overlords."

You forgot to wear your tin foil hat.

I, Robot story

[by Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't there an I, Robot short story by Asimov about a mind-reading computer that lied to people in order to avoid hurting their feelings (because that would "harm" a human)?

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[Eternauta3k (680157)]

Utter bitch? That story showed she had feelings!

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[Zarf (5735)]

Utter bitch? That story showed she had feelings!

Women with feelings are bitches, men with feelings are pansies. Women without feelings are elf-tarts and men without feelings are vulcan-cakes.

FYI. That's geek dating slang in the big geek party scene. And, you're not part of the scene if you are cute and stupid... which is a 'tard-muffin.

Example:

Geek Girl1: Ooh, check out that chem-student what a chiseled IQ... he's a total vulcan-cake.
Geek Girl2: I scoped him already, he's dating a 'tard-muffin lit-major.
Geek Girl1: So, like totally, illogical! Why are a

Objects and Nouns

[natedubbya (645990)]

This area of research has been growing more popular lately. Last year's big language conference had a keynote speaker address the question of brain waves and word recognition. Most of the progress though is based on nouns because they have a core rooted meaning in everyone's head...you basically visualize a generic version of that object in the world. You say hammer, I think of an actual hammer I've seen. It's not really mind reading because the approach falls apart when you start talking about verbs an

What about Pron?

[brunokummel (664267)]

I know it sounds funny but i would like to see the brain activity for pornografic pictures, since it already known that "bad words" are stored in a different area of the brain than regular words... it would be kind of interesting if "bad images (or nice depending on the person)" got also stored on different areas....

Mind Reading Computer?!

[prakslash (681585)]

Yet again we see a jounalist dumbing down scientific research into tabloid fodder.

What the CMU scientists have done is some preliminary brain imaging using MRI.

Here is a better CMU link [cmu.edu] with more details and pictures. The scientists hope that this research to could have applications in the study of autism, disorders of thought such as paranoid schizophrenia, and semantic dementias such as Pick's disease. Not once did they ominously dub their research as "mind reading" as claimed by the submitter.

Did they find a t-shaped device...

[lelitsch (31136)]

...like a Claymore trigger?

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[Zarf (5735)]

...like a Claymore trigger?

I don't think they have the pattern recognition for that.

But what are they watching?

[SGDarkKnight (253157)]

It's too bad the article doesn't go into any detail about what they are measuring... its possible its reading alpha waves (normally linked to waking periods of relaxtaion or possibly drowsiness), beta waves (normal waking consciousness), gamma waves (perception and consciousness), or who knows, maybe they are monitoring the chemical reactions taking place. I guess its a possiblity that they don't want to let out the key to their study just yet.

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[SGDarkKnight (253157)]

I guess i need to read up on MRI's a bit more, i always thought that they were used for imageing purposes; Such as detecting abnormalities, tumors, etc... without any of the harmful (possible outcomes) of say x-rays, or how CT scans are not as accurate ar determining differences extreamly small areas. I didn't think your brain would psyically change just because you were thinking one thing or another. Monitoring the brain wave activity would seem to be a more successful way to dtermine what people are think

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[multipart/mixed (163409)]

IANAD (but I watch a lot of House)

> I didn't think your brain would psyically change just
> because you were thinking one thing or another.

Your brain doesn't, but the blood flow patterns do.

Just like how your computer doesn't physically change when sitting idle or watching porn, it will use less/more power and different parts of different chips will flow more electrons in different patterns.

Oh, and you need to google up "functional MRI"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging [wikipedia.org]

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[mikael (484)]

The latest technique in MRI is functional MRI (fMRI) . The doctors can watch the oxygen demand levels of the brain change dynamically as a person thinks. The resulting brain scan image superimposes the oxygen demand levels in red-yellow-green-blue scale over a monochrome image of that slice of the brain. Effectively, they see which areas of the brain are in use from second to second.

In some cases, they have discovered that people in coma's or a persistive vegetable state have been discovered to have been aw

Oddly Enough

[eldavojohn (898314)]

It's strange, every time a researcher is assigned to go disassemble the prototype, something else comes up right when they come within range of the machine. Yesterday something kept spamming "REDRUM" across the networks broadcast address and causing bandwidth issues. Today several printers in the lab wouldn't stop printing out documents that looked like fake rebates for Newegg ...

Re: Your Sig

[k_187 (61692)]

So you're saying Microsoft is God?

Call me when it translates...

[icebike (68054)]

Quoting article:
"We believe we have identified a number of the basic building blocks that the brain uses to represent meaning. These building blocks could be used to predict patterns for any concrete noun..."

The implications of building blocks would suggest that the french word for "Desk" (bureau) would elicit the same response as the english word for "Desk", instead of some governmental unit.

That would be useful, (once we get cheap portable MRI hats).

However I doubt these building blocks are anywhere near that generic due to the excess emotional baggage that people associate with words. I suppose it might be able to detect the presence of such baggage even if it could not decipher it.

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[orateam (861461)]

Of course this will eventually lead to computers to mapping and "determining" patterns that lead to criminal activities. Such as the mind of a pedafile or rapist. Reading your mind to see if you have "BAD THOUGHTS" capable of criminal activity, will lead to the government having the ability to read individuals for criminal minds and arresting for such thoughts and predicted activities.

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[icebike (68054)]

Ohhhh, riiiight. This will help: http://www.ilovebonnie.net/tinfoil-hat.jpg [ilovebonnie.net]

This could get ugly...

[rehtonAesoohC (954490)]

I forsee some lonely nerd using a video-chat application to try and talk with a woman when all of a sudden, his computer reads his mind and says to him:

"I'm reading that you're horny, Jim. Here is a selection of your favorite porn- Princess Leia doing an Ewok. Enjoy!"
Prospective Girlfriend: "You sicko! *exits the video chat*"
Jim: "Oh well... I guess I'll just enjoy this video. Thanks manputer!"

And the working name for the computer will be

[misterhypno (978442)]

either:

Kreskin

Derren Brown

Chriss Angel

Dunninger

Max Maven

What if this is old news?

[BobMcD (601576)]

Could this be one of those technologies that is already considered 'quaint' by the elite societies by the time the public discovers it?

Just a thought...