'Mind-reading' with fMRI

16 April 2009

It may be possible to ‘read’ a person’s memories just by looking at brain activity, research suggests.

Demis Hassabis and Professor Eleanor Maguire from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London looked at the hippocampus, a region of the brain crucial for navigation, memory recall and imagining future events.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they examined the activity of hippocampal neurons involved in spatial awareness as volunteers navigated a virtual reality environment. "Surprisingly, just by looking at the brain data we could predict exactly where they were in the virtual reality environment. In other words, we could 'read' their spatial memories," said Professor Maguire.

Image credit: caracterdesign/iStockphoto

Reference

Hassabis D et al. Decoding neuronal ensembles in the human hippocampus. Curr Biol 2009;19(7):546-54.