Mind reading moves closer to reality

Mind reading could be taken a step away from the field of science fiction, thanks to a new study, the researchers taught a computer to spot specific memories that a person was with them.

To be sure, science is a long way off from attachment to a device and people knowing their thoughts. But the study showed that past events leave only "memory traces" in a portion of the brain called the hippocampus, traces can be distinguished between them in brain scanning.

The study is the number of online March 11th Current Biology.

"We found that our memories are certainly represented in the hippocampus," senior study author Eleanor Maguire, a professor at the Wellcome Trust Center for neuroimaging at University College London, said in the statement. "Now that we've seen where they are, we have an opportunity to understand how memories are stored and how they may change over time."

In the experiment, researchers took 10 people to three short films several times and asked to memorize what they saw.

The seven films showed two different actresses shared relatively similar scenarios: In one, a woman looking through her purse to find an envelope and then dropped in a mailbox in another, a woman over a cup of coffee and dropped the Cup in a trash can.

This type of silence is considered an episodic memory, or memory of a collection of events, as opposed to a semantic memory, such as being able to recall a fact or an implicit memory, such as the possibility of tie your shoes, said Martin Monti, a neuroscientist at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England.

Afterwards, participants were asked to recall either a specific movie, or any one of the films, while their brains scanned using functional MRI. While the scan may not actually look at the firing of groups of neurons (called voxels), it does report changes in blood flow that signal activity in particular brain areas, Monti explained.

A computer algorithm then examined patterns generated when participants "remembered", and tried to identify the film was reminiscent of volunteers.

Computer could accurately predict an accuracy of about 45 percent of movie one person was thought during the scan. Since there were three films, would be offered the chance of about 33 percent accuracy.

"The algorithm was able to provide correctly which of the three films of volunteers was recalling significantly above what would be expected by chance, lead study author Martin Chadwick, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University College London, said in a statement. "This suggests that [the memories of people] are registered in a regular pattern."

Previous studies have shown the hippocampus, located deep within the brain's medial temporal lobe, is associated with the creation and strengthening memories. This is essentially the brain process of putting together sights, sounds and smells, can all be processed in different brain areas and bringing them together in memory, Monti said.

So one day scientists will be able to use brain scans to read your mind?

That's probably a long way off, because fMRIs are a technically advanced but still rather raw-viewing means neural activity. And though researchers were able to tell the difference between memories within the strict limits of the laboratory, which is a far cry from being able to "read", memories that make up the entire human experience, Monti said.

"Our instruments are not that fine grained. It's like trying to read a book when not know the language and your eyeglasses are crummy," he said.

One of the beauties of an experiment, however, is the possibility that a better understanding of the brain may open the door to new treatments for memory problems, said Paul Sanberg, a professor of Neurosurgery and director of the University of South Florida Center for Aging and Brain Repair.

"The study confirms these memories are found in the hippocampus," Sanberg said. "We understand more about memories and how they are formed and stored, we will come closer to understanding people have problems with memory or from injury, aging or degenerative diseases."