Mind Reading with Functional MRI

March 6, 2008

Scientists can accurately predict which of a thousand pictures a person is looking at by analyzing brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The approach should shed light on how the brain processes visual information, and it might one day be used to reconstruct dreams.

“[The research] suggests that fMRI-based measurements of brain activity contain much more information about underlying neural processes than has previously been appreciated,” says Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and senior author of the study. (Technology Review)