As everyone becomes more and more aware of the surveillance culture that has gripped the world, it seems that the only sanctuary left to us, our minds, isn’t even a safe haven anymore.
Researchers at the University of Oregon have recently invented a system where, by means of a brain scan, the thoughts that are being spoken in your mind will be projected onto a screen. The team’s findings were recently published in The Journal of Neuroscience.
The researchers took 23 volunteers and hooked them all up to a fMRI machine which monitored their neurological brain activity. The subjects were shown 1,000 photos of random people’s faces and were also hooked up to a software created artificial intelligence program that has been designed to record a mathematical representation of brain activity while the subjects looked at the photos.
The AI program had been previously developed to look for certain brain activity and patterns when some one was actually looking at a human face. The program then had to exactly define what the faces looked like according to the detected brain activity of the subject. The AI program is designed to examine two different sections of the brain. One part of the brain controls language and number recognition as well as memories while the other isolated brain section is responsible for visual processing.
This is what the AI system projected onto the screen in the lab:
While the faces were, indeed, projected, matching them to the original face seemed to be less accurate than the researchers had hoped for. However, the AI system actually did translate the thoughts and impressions from the subjects onto the screen. The OTC and the ANG are the two different parts of the brain they focused on. It, the AI program, actually could read their thought patterns and inner dialogue.
The AI program captured the features and even responded to questions the subjects were asked such as was the face they were looking at happy or sad?
PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay / University of Oregon