Mind reading.
The phrase itself sounds like something out of a science fiction or fantasy story, doesn’t it? For many, it is as far removed from reality as the concept of magic or precognition. Insight and deduction make it into a parlor game, joked about and easily dismissed.
Mind reading.
The phrase itself sounds like something out of a science fiction or fantasy story, doesn’t it? For many, it is as far removed from reality as the concept of magic or precognition. Insight and deduction make it into a parlor game, joked about and easily dismissed.
But the thing is, mind reading is getting awfully close to being a real thing. And a lab in Berkeley is behind it.
Professor Jack Gallant and researchers at the Gallant Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, have spent the last few years studying possible interpretations of brain scans. Researchers have focused their attention on regions of the brain that correspond to perception or sight. Recently, they’ve been able to interpret the scans of these regions using a mathematical algorithm to convert the readings onto a pixelated medium. Once converted, these readings can be viewed as images or videos.
Yes, that’s right. UC-Berkeley has invented a way of seeing the world through your eyes.
It’s a slight exaggeration to say that they see whatever the person being scanned does, but to a certain extent that’s what is happening. The videos are fuzzy and somewhat mutated; colors are prone to shifting, and minute details tend to be lost in the haze of static that comes with the readings. But the videos, available online at GallantLab.org, are eerily similar to what is being shown to the subjects.
This isn’t something to be afraid of. In fact, this is something to welcome.
The first thing many people consider when informed of this breakthrough is the creation of some mind reading or brain control machine. The more likely applications of this technology are extensive.
Further research could allow scientists to recreate senses or sensations lost to some people, such as sight or hearing. In other words, the blind could someday use some form of this technology to see again. It could also help diagnose conditions such as strokes or Alzheimer’s.
And for those worried about whether something pulled from their minds could incriminate them, the potential for this to be used in court is “questionable,” according to the Gallant Lab website.
It also cannot be used remotely. The only way someone is going to get a glimpse of what is going on in one’s mind is with that person’s consent, and then only using a specialized MRI machine, known as a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine. It would be all but impossible to isolate one person’s brain signals from a crowd.
What this is, essentially, is a first step toward finding an interface for new forms of rehabilitation, both physical and mental. If the correct encoding and signaling patterns are identified, the process could potentially be reversed—an image could be inserted into the mind rather than extracted from it.
As an example, it could be used to give sight back to people who have lost it. Similarly, it could be used to record an experience from memory to share later with one’s friends and family, or used to communicate such a message to someone in a coma.
There are no guarantees, of course. And this is only the very earliest stage of the experimentation process. However, the potential alone is exciting enough for scientists to consider potential applications should this process be perfected.
These applications may be decades away, but they are not to be dismissed. The potential advances in prosthetics and rehabilitation alone are reason enough to keep the research going. This is more than mind reading; this is possibly a cure for problems that haven’t even been on the periphery of possible curing until now.
Forget parlor tricks—this type of mind reading has the potential to do honest good.
