
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
[google_news title=”” keyword=”mind reading” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]- Reading Your Mind: How AI Decodes Brain Activity to Reconstruct What You See and Hearon July 23, 2024 at 9:54 am
Discover how AI is decoding brain activity to reconstruct what we see and hear. Explore the potential and challenges of mind-reading AI, from transforming healthcare to redefining human-computer ...
- 10 Famous Emily Dickinson Poems Worth The Readon July 20, 2024 at 2:00 pm
Explore top Emily Dickinson poems that withstand the test of time. Admire her unique voice, vivid imagery, and profound themes through her best works of poetry.
- Quick 'mind reading' test will show whether you're really intelligent, doctor sayson July 20, 2024 at 7:52 am
Conversely, lower scores are very closely linked to autism, with the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test' - or RMET - widely used to help identify neurodivergence among adults. Posting to TikTok ...
- Mind-reading AI turns thoughts into pictures with unprecedented accuracyon July 5, 2024 at 5:07 am
By employing an improved mind-reading AI system, they could produce “closest” reconstructions of images, particularly when using direct recordings of brain activity. This remarkable feat was ...
- Mind-reading AI recreates what you're looking at with amazing accuracyon July 3, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Artificial intelligence systems can now create remarkably accurate reconstructions of what someone is looking at based on recordings of their brain activity. These reconstructed images are greatly ...
- Mind Reading: ‘I Got You’ Artist Devon Cole On Getting Kicked Out Of Rehab And Learning To Lean Into Friendshipon July 1, 2024 at 12:50 pm
So I’m about to get a little uncomfortable, and I’m excited.” Mind Reading (formerly Hollywood & Mind) is a recurring column that features interviews with musicians, actors, athletes ...
- As mind-reading technology improves, Colorado passes first-in-nation law to protect privacy of our thoughtson June 27, 2024 at 2:35 pm
If you think telepathy or mind control is the stuff of science fiction ... including devices that can actually read minds and alter our brains. Dr. Sean Pauzauskie, a Neurologist at UCHealth ...
- I tried a new AI mind reading model — this is the future of human computer interactionon June 13, 2024 at 10:04 am
It isn’t every day you walk into the offices of a cutting-edge tech startup and the first words you hear from the CEO are “I came up with the idea while tripping on hallucinogenics”.
- Mind Readingon May 17, 2024 at 12:07 am
In science fiction stories, mind reading is routinely used for nefarious purposes. In the real world, having a clear sense of what others think and feel helps us avoid conflict and ...
- Scientists Concerned About Devices That Literally Read Your Mindon January 6, 2024 at 6:01 am
As the world inches ever closer to mind-reading technology, some scientists are calling to legally enshrine the right to keep our thoughts to ourselves. In interviews with Undark, neuroscientists ...
via Google News and Bing News