Carnegie Mellon University scientists can now use brain activation patterns to identify complex thoughts, such as, “The witness shouted during the trial.”
This latest research led by CMU’s Marcel Just builds on the pioneering use of machine learning algorithms with brain imaging technology to “mind read.” The findings indicate that the mind’s building blocks for constructing complex thoughts are formed by the brain’s various sub-systems and are not word-based. Published in Human Brain Mapping and funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the study offers new evidence that the neural dimensions of concept representation are universal across people and languages.
“One of the big advances of the human brain was the ability to combine individual concepts into complex thoughts, to think not just of ‘bananas,’ but ‘I like to eat bananas in evening with my friends,'” said Just, the D.O. Hebb University Professor of Psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. “We have finally developed a way to see thoughts of that complexity in the fMRI signal. The discovery of this correspondence between thoughts and brain activation patterns tells us what the thoughts are built of.”
Previous work by Just and his team showed that thoughts of familiar objects, like bananas or hammers, evoke activation patterns that involve the neural systems that we use to deal with those objects. For example, how you interact with a banana involves how you hold it, how you bite it and what it looks like.
The new study demonstrates that the brain’s coding of 240 complex events, sentences like the shouting during the trial scenario uses an alphabet of 42 meaning components, or neurally plausible semantic features, consisting of features, like person, setting, size, social interaction and physical action. Each type of information is processed in a different brain system—which is how the brain also processes the information for objects. By measuring the activation in each brain system, the program can tell what types of thoughts are being contemplated.
For seven adult participants, the researchers used a computational model to assess how the brain activation patterns for 239 sentences corresponded to the neurally plausible semantic features that characterized each sentence. Then the program was able to decode the features of the 240th left-out sentence. They went through leaving out each of the 240 sentences in turn, in what is called cross-validation.
The model was able to predict the features of the left-out sentence, with 87 percent accuracy, despite never being exposed to its activation before. It was also able to work in the other direction, to predict the activation pattern of a previously unseen sentence, knowing only its semantic features.
“Our method overcomes the unfortunate property of fMRI to smear together the signals emanating from brain events that occur close together in time, like the reading of two successive words in a sentence,” Just said. “This advance makes it possible for the first time to decode thoughts containing several concepts. That’s what most human thoughts are composed of.”
He added, “A next step might be to decode the general type of topic a person is thinking about, such as geology or skateboarding. We are on the way to making a map of all the types of knowledge in the brain.”
Learn more: Beyond Bananas: CMU Scientists Harness “Mind Reading” Technology to Decode Complex Thoughts
The Latest on: Mind reading technology
[google_news title=”” keyword=”mind reading technology” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]- Humanoid Robot With AI Mind Is Meant to Think Just Like People, And It’s Learningon May 2, 2024 at 1:10 am
Canadian startup Sanctuary AI introduces the seventh generation of the Phoenix robot with a mind and capabilities meant to mimic the human one ...
- Q4 2024 Mind Technology Inc Earnings Callon April 30, 2024 at 8:07 pm
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to the mining Technology Fiscal 2024 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
- Mind Technology (NASDAQ: MIND)on April 26, 2024 at 7:26 am
MIND Technology, Inc. engages in the provision of technology and solutions for exploration, survey and defense applications in oceanographic, hydrographic, defense, seismic and security industries.
- MIND Technology Incon April 22, 2024 at 4:59 pm
Semiconductor ETFs can help investors tap into tailwinds such as demand from artificial intelligence, government grants and a re-shoring movement.
- MIND Technology Inc MINDon April 21, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Morningstar Quantitative Ratings for Stocks are generated using an algorithm that compares companies that are not under analyst coverage to peer companies that do receive analyst-driven ratings ...
- Can AI Read Our Minds? And Should We Be Worried About It?on April 18, 2024 at 11:07 am
Such technology might have some benefits ... Well, for real-time AI-powered mind-reading to be possible, we need to be able to identify precise, one-to-one correspondences between particular ...
- Unraveling the Reality of Mind-Reading Technologyon April 16, 2024 at 2:40 am
Explore the feasibility of mind-reading technology with our in-depth analysis. From neural implants to generative AI, uncover the latest advancement ...
- In a future with more ‘mind reading,’ thanks to neurotech, we may need to rethink freedom of thoughton April 9, 2024 at 6:08 am
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Parker Crutchfield, Western Michigan University (THE CONVERSATION) Socrates, the ...
- In A Future With More 'Mind Reading,' Thanks To Neurotech, We May Need To Rethink Freedom Of Thoughton April 9, 2024 at 5:17 am
Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher, never wrote things down. He warned that writing undermines memory – that it is nothing but a reminder of so ...
- In a future with more ‘mind reading,’ thanks to neurotech, we may need to rethink freedom of thoughton April 9, 2024 at 4:02 am
These views may seem peculiar, but his central fear is a timeless one: that technology threatens thought ... protecting the mind isn’t nearly as easy as protecting bodies and property.
via Google News and Bing News