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."

I, Robot story

[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)?

Re:But what are they watching?

[multipartmixed]

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]

Re:But what are they watching?

[mikael]

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 aware of their surroundings.