The idea of a device that can materialize one’s memories out of thin air seems like it could only exist in science fiction.
But in a new study, researchers were able to pretty accurately sketch out the thoughts of participants simply by scanning their brains.
It’s helping scientists understand how memory works in the human brain, and it may be a first step toward the futuristic ability to read minds.
Researchers at the University of Oregon showed a group of participants, all strapped into an MRI machine, a series of photos of human faces.
They followed the participants’ brain activity as they looked at each image, mapping neural activity to a code of numbers that correspond to the characteristics of each face.
This part of the experiment accounted for the machine-learning function, measuring how the brain registers the numbers assigned with each new face.
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