Thursday, October 17, 2013
Science in the News
Scientist have discovered how to read peoples minds. They are able to have a person look at an image and by reading their brain activity they can have the image they see appear on a screen. At the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University in The Netherlands, scientist have been able to use a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fmri) to see what people are seeing. The scientist put people in the scanner and monitored their brain activity in the occipital lobe as they looked at the letters B, R, A, I, and N on a screen. The machine would then translate the brain activity into an image. This could have many applications in the future. Since this is just a developing research area the technology does not currently produce a clear detailed picture. In the future when technology advances we will be able to see images more clearly. One of the things that i think this science would be interesting for would be in the area of dreams. The occipital lobe is very active even more so when you are dreaming, so this could be used to make videos of your dreams. That to me is very interesting.
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This is really cool!! I had the EXACT same thought about seeing dreams. I've always wondered if recording dreams would be possible. In the area of dreams, I wonder if the videos would be able to create detailed pictures (with better technology), or if there will be simple pictures as I often remember them. For example, if I have a dream and cannot remember what a person's face looked like, would the recording be able to show a face or will it be a blank space as I remember it?
ReplyDeleteAnother way I hope this technology can be used is in investigations. Since eyewitness testimonies are not always reliable, it would be fantastic if this technology could be used to show images of what the eyewitness thinks of when a certain word is displayed.