LOL !!! - This Is Your Brain, On 'The Wall' (Pink Floyd) - NPR

[WillyT]

Mind Reading: Technology Turns Thought Into Action
by JON HAMILTON - NPR
May 12, 2011

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An old technology is providing new insights into the human brain. The technology is called electrocorticography, or ECoG, and it uses electrodes placed on the surface of the brain to detect electrical signals coming from the brain itself.

Doctors have been using ECoG since the 1950s to figure out which area of the brain is causing seizures in people with severe epilepsy. But in the past decade, scientists have shown that when connected to a computer running special software, ECoG also can be used to control robotic arms, study how the brain produces speech and even decode thoughts.

In one recent experiment, researchers were able to use ECoG to determine the word a person was imagining.

And...

Watching The Brain Listen To Music

In theory, researchers could receive signals from hundreds or even thousands of electrodes. So far, they haven't gone beyond dozens, yet the results have been spectacular. Schalk shows some of what ECoG can do in his lab. There aren't any animals or test tubes here, but there are plenty of computers, including one playing Pink Floyd's album The Wall.

Schalk is showing me the results of experiments he did using ECoG to monitor people listening to The Wall. He points toward two waveforms on the computer screen. One shows the mountains and valleys that represent changes in the music volume; the second waveform looks very similar, but it represents the electrical signals generated by the brain in response to the music.

"There's a very close correlation between the actual loudness in the music that is just playing right now and the intensity of the music that we're decoding or inferring from the person's brain," Schalk says. "Isn't that pretty awesome?"

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Much More: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/12/135598390/mind-reading-technology-turns-thought-into-action

:wow:

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