US scientists have learned to decipher human thoughts in real time. The accuracy of reading the minds of young women volunteers amazed the researchers - 96%. This happened in another, mainstream study in which scientists tried to determine the location in the brain from which a deadly signal is sent to epileptics.
A group of neuroscientists from the University of Washington, USA, have succeeded in decoding human brain signals in real time. Rajesh Rao, Lead Scientist, Deputy Program Manager, says that at the very beginning of a rather complex experiment, the task was only to help people with epilepsy. Having invited epileptic patients, among whom were dominated by men, doctors and scientists, connecting electrodes to the temporal lobes of the patients' brains, monitored them for a week. The purpose of the surveillance was to determine the location of the source of the deadly seizures.
In parallel with this, another group of scientists removed additional information from the electrodes, but on completely different, more accurate equipment, with the help of which extremely complex studies of neural brain waves are carried out. The first part of the program was successfully completed - the scientists were able to determine a point in the cerebral cortex that periodically sends a paralyzing impulse, due to which people are shaken by a severe convulsion. However, the unofficial part of the experiment was continued with greater activity. Suddenly, it turned out that special equipment designed to measure neural brain waves records signals that resemble the mental activity of the brain.
Having added young healthy women to the group of epileptic men, it was decided to show the volunteers a series of houses and people's faces, and each image appeared on the screen for 400 ms (0.04 sec). Signals from the frontal lobes of the subjects, where the center of the sensory input is located, were analyzed. It was found that at the end of each session, the neuron study program (in real time) determined up to 96% of the cases which image the patient was mentally drawing. The display showed the outlines of an object, with a time difference of 20 seconds after a person saw it. The full text of the research report is published in the latest issue of the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
Herman Kim