Whatever You Think Can Now be converted into Photos; Thanks to a new ‘Mind-Reading’ Technology

How many times before important exams have we wished to gain a photogenic memory strong enough to cram the entire of you syllabus within a night, right? However, while this might not be possible yet, what if we tell you that is opposite might be coming into transition?

Researchers at Radboud University have revealed that they are developing a “mind reading” technology that can visualize a person’s brainwaves in pictorial form.

The researchers on the quest to make this mind-reading technology possible revealed that in an experiment conducted on two volunteers, some positive results were noted. The volunteers were shown a different image each and were made to sit in a powerful brain-reading functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner.

The fMRI scanner detects brain activity based on blood flow. Hence, when the volunteers were focusing on the image given, the fMRI started observing the changing frequencies of the brainwave within the part of the brain responsible for vision.

The information gained by the scanner was then transferred to the computer’s algorithm system which managed to depict an accurate visualization of the same image that was shown.

The best part about the entire research was that the images shown to the volunteers were formulated by a computer using the “paint-by-numbers” technique where each tiny dot whether light or dark was given a unique computer program code.

The pictures that were formed were new and were never seen either by the volunteers or fed into the fMRI scanner before. So, the accuracy it displayed in reading the brain signals and curating those signals in pictorial representation on the computer was a massive step.

This advancement in technology is massive and scientists are hopeful for even greater outcomes for this. Cognitive neuroscientist, Thirza Dado, believes that while the tests were solely focused on the image that was shown in the exact moment, the future with this technology can curate the image of what one person was thinking too. Hence, could be a massive blowing step into the world of mind reading and even clinical settings.

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