4 ms·

It doesn't try to read thoughts. It uses commands that are sent to the tongue/mouth to form syllables. We're nowhere near being able to trace / decode thoughts.

sagartewari01 7y ago
10 years ago I watched a national geographic documentary about something quite similar to this one. The results were also apperantly impressive. It's weird they haven't progressed much during this period. Sadly I can't find any resources about that project anywhere.
- kevin2107 7y ago
  Probably because of this little important detailed not mentioned in the title "Five participants underwent chronic implantation of a high-density, subdural electrode array over the lateral surface of the brain as part of their clinical treatment for epilepsy"
joshvm 7y ago
Actually you can, in limited cases. If you have prior knowledge of the person's brain activity when looking at an image, it's possible to predict (reconstruct an image of) what they're looking at. https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/figures?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006633 https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/figures?id=10...
- Engineering-MD 7y ago
  That is not reading thoughts. That is via the occipital Cortex which has a highly structured representation of what is projected on to the retina. This is much easier as the organisation of the data is maintained relative to the retina, just regrouped according to visual field rather than eye.
  - Teever 7y ago
    If we're reading data from the brain isn't that by definition reading thoughts, regardless of where in the brain they originate from?
  - joshvm 7y ago
    Part of the study involved decoding images from memory/recall. I did say _limited_. It depends how tightly you want to define "thought", but being able to think of an object and having a computer display a reasonable representation of it seems like a good start.

sagartewari01 7y ago

10 years ago I watched a national geographic documentary about something quite similar to this one. The results were also apperantly impressive. It's weird they haven't progressed much during this period. Sadly I can't find any resources about that project anywhere.

kevin2107 7y ago
Probably because of this little important detailed not mentioned in the title "Five participants underwent chronic implantation of a high-density, subdural electrode array over the lateral surface of the brain as part of their clinical treatment for epilepsy"

joshvm 7y ago

Actually you can, in limited cases. If you have prior knowledge of the person's brain activity when looking at an image, it's possible to predict (reconstruct an image of) what they're looking at. https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/figures?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006633 https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/figures?id=10...

Engineering-MD 7y ago
That is not reading thoughts. That is via the occipital Cortex which has a highly structured representation of what is projected on to the retina. This is much easier as the organisation of the data is maintained relative to the retina, just regrouped according to visual field rather than eye.
- Teever 7y ago
  If we're reading data from the brain isn't that by definition reading thoughts, regardless of where in the brain they originate from?
- joshvm 7y ago
  Part of the study involved decoding images from memory/recall. I did say _limited_. It depends how tightly you want to define "thought", but being able to think of an object and having a computer display a reasonable representation of it seems like a good start.