Brain scan can read people's thought patterns

The results of the study were published in the March 11 online edition of Current Biology.

According to the findings, researchers can tell which memory of a past event a person is thinking of from the pattern of their brain activity alone.

Senior author of the study, Eleanor Maguire and her colleagues Martin Chadwick, Demis Hassabis, and Nikolaus Weiskopf showed 10 people each three very short films before scanning their brains. Each movie featured a different actress and was about a similar everyday scenario.

The researchers then scanned the participants' brains while they were asked to recall each of the films. The researchers ran the imaging data through a computer algorithm in order to identify patterns in the brain activity associated with memories for each of the films.

The results showed that those patterns could be identified to accurately tell which movie each person was thinking about when they were being scanned.


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