Mind Expanding Techniques

Brain MRI is a relatively new technology which allows scientists to “read” a person’s thoughts in a computer screen. The Magnetic Resonance Imaging has applications in many scientific fields. The one which we will discuss here is in neuroscience which is aimed to use MRI for brain scan. This is officially called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging or fMRI.

Recently I was reading a Focus magazine and had an article about fMRI and how scientists can read our minds. I found it very interesting and I did some basic research on the field which I will present you briefly in this page.

What is an MRI brain scan?

fMRI technology allows scientists to observe whatever happens in our brain:

o The Images we see

o The words we read

o The sounds we listen to

o The routes we follow

o Our intentions

o Our Unconscious activity

o Our thoughts in general

Many ethical questions arise upon such a discovery. Up to now, our thoughts were the only private space we have and no one could gain access to them. There is an imperative need for a law establishment for the usage of these technologies.

How does a brain MRI work?

While we hear a sound, the brain cells (neurons) in the auditory area of the brain cortex, needs more blood and consumes more oxygen. An fMRI causes a reaction of the molecules of a blood protein which is responsible for oxygen carrying, and detects these molecules.

For the visualization of this data in a computer monitor, the computer divides the brain into small volume elements that are called voxels. These voxels equals approximately to 50 mm3. Every voxel contains 5 million neurons which they are interconnected through 50 km of dendrites and 200 km of axons. All these connect to 30 billion points (synapses). Impressive…

The fMRI detects only the oxygen exchange which happens in every voxel. Then it represents with yellow and red color gradations the active voxels and with green color the inactive ones. In simple words, an fMRI observes and measures the oxygen consumption in the brain areas.

And what about brain MRI accuracy?

Let’s see some interesting experiments of brain MRI scans.

In 2002 Dr. Daniel Langleben wanted to check the brain activity when someone cheats in a card game. He gave two cards in two students and instructed them to memorize the cards without telling him which card they were given. Then he asked the students to lie for one card and to tell the truth for the other card. He performed brain MRI to the students while every 3 seconds, a monitor showed to them a random card.

From their brain reactions, as accurately recorded from the MRI scan, Langleben confirmed that he was able to identify which cards the students were given and also for which cards they lied about. All these in an impressive accuracy rate of 96%.

Another impressive experiment took place in 2008 on California University by Jack Gallant. While being in fMRI scan a person sees many pictures. In the meantime the scanner analyzes the resulting brain activity curve. A computer analyzes the pictures according to the “way we see” and searches for correlations in the brain activity curve. A pattern for each picture results from this procedure. In the last phase of the experiment the researchers show to the person 120 more pictures, while they compare the brain activity curve of each picture, until the pattern detects which picture is the one that the person sees. The success rate ranges from 72% up to 92% in two people.

If the letters can be assumed as pictures then with the brain MRI we can read the words that someone sees. In a similar way we can scan and detect sounds, emotions and nearly every though. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a technology which can reveal us many uncovered mysteries of the human brain and mind, but we have to use it wisely and not for spying purposes.