CFS ME BCT 2010

Mind reading “a step closer to reality.”

BBC, 13 March 2009

Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging at University College London told reporters: Mind reading comes a step closer as scientists map people’s brain.

The hippocampus is widely known to be integral to memory, but researchers say they now see how images are stored and recalled in the part of the brain. Neurons in the hippocampus, also known as “place cells”, activate when we move around to tell us where we are.

Using a computer keypad, four young male volunteers navigated virtual reality rooms, choosing to “stand” in one of four locations marked by a rug. The British scientists were able to tell where an individual had been “standing” inside a virtual reality room from records of the volunteers’ brain activity. Their heads had been placed in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, allowing their brain activity to be monitored. This piece of equipment highlights brain regions as they become active. Focusing on the hippocampus, the small area of the brain vital to navigation, memory recall and imagining future events, the scientists measured blood flow related to neural activity.

“We asked _______we could see any interesting patterns in the neural activity that could tell us what participants were thinking, _______ in this case where they were.”, said Professor Eleanor Maguire.

Are people lying?

Surprisingly, just by looking at the brain data the scientists could predict exactly where the volunteers were in the virtual reality environment.

“By looking at activity over tens of thousands of neurons, we can see that there must be a functional structure – a pattern – to how these memories are encoded.”, said Professor Maguire.

But the researchers stressed that the prospect of genuinely reading someone’s most intimate thoughts- or working out if they were lying- was still a long way off. It is brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s which could stand to benefit from such research.”

Understanding how we learn and store memories could aid our understanding of conditions in which memory is compromised and potentially help patients in the rehabilitation process,” said Professor Maguire.

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