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SALT LAKE CITY -- Thanks to the help of some willing epileptics and some (probably) not-so-willing ferrets, we are one step closer to being able to peer inside someone's mind and see what we find there.
A recent study by scientists at the University of California - Berkeley has been able to reconstruct the words people hear only by using information from a detailed brain scan, albeit a very invasive brain scan. 15 patients with intractable seizures volunteered to participate in the study. In order to locate their seizures, neurosciences needed to remove their skull and place 256 electrodes around the brain to record activity for about a week before going back in and removing the electrodes - as well as the part of the brain causing seizures.
During this week of brain recording, researchers held 5-10 minute conversations with the volunteer subjects. Based on the data collected from the electrodes inside their skulls, the researchers were able to reconstruct words so accurately that they could reliably guess what was said. You can hear the reconstructions of the words Waldo, structure, doubt and property below.
"Brian's analysis can reproduce the sound the patient heard, and you can actually recognize the word, although not at a perfect level," said co-author Robert Knight, referring to Brian Pasley, lead author.
Some might say very far from perfect, considering that cracking open a skull is required. But according to the researchers, this is a very important first step providing a priceless communication tool for people who are unable use ordinary words.
"This is huge for patients who have damage to their speech mechanisms because of a stroke or Lou Gehrig's disease and can't speak," Knight said.
Reconstructions were based on what the subjects actually heard, but the current thinking is that imagined processes like thinking up words and sentences produce similar re-constructable patterns even without an outside stimulus as the source of brain data. In other words, someone may just have their mind read in order to communicate.
"This research is based on sounds a person actually hears, but to use it for reconstructing imagined conversations, these principles would have to apply to someone's internal verbalizations," Pasley.
The work builds on similar studies of ferrets, where researchers were able to reconstruct the sounds that the animals heard, even though the animals had no idea what was being said.
This is the second study in the last few months to come out of UC Berkeley that was able to reconstruct some sensory stimulus just from brain activity. In September, Jack Gallant and his team were able to reconstruct movies in real time viewed on a screen using only functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Who knows? Someday we may be able to just put a helmet on someone's head and see what they see, hear what they hear and think what they think.
