Can Brain Scans Read Your Mind?

Can neuroscience read people’s minds? Some researchers, and some new businesses, are banking on a brain imaging technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to reveal hidden thoughts, such as lies, truths or deep desires.

New research by neuroscientists at UCLA and Rutgers University provides evidence that fMRI can be used in certain circumstances to determine what a person is thinking. At the same time, the research suggests that highly accurate “mind reading” using fMRI is still far from reality. The research is scheduled to be published in the October 2009 issue of the journal Psychological Science.

By Lockergnome

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Bending Time’s Arrow

Psychologists suspect that this space-time continuum may be more than a social convention, an artifice that we all simply agree to. Perhaps the brain has wired our perceptions of space and time together for some reason. A team of researchers has been exploring this question in the laboratory, using an unusual pair of spectacles.

By Wray Herbert (We’re Only Human)

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Shortcuts’ of the mind lead to miscalculations of weight and caloric intake

Psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania have identified a cognitive shortcut, or heuristic, they call ‘Unit Bias,’ which causes people to ignore vital, obvious information in their decision-making process, points to a fundamental flaw in the modern, evolved mind and may also play a role in the American population’s 30 years of weight gain.

By Science Centric

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Why Are Some Scientists Doubtful About Subliminal Influence?

Does subliminal perception really occur? Can anyone be able to observe something involuntarily without being conscious about it? These questions were raised to challenge the scientific validity of such claims. Experiments were conducted to prove that subliminal perception was indeed a fact.

Messages were flashed briefly and fast to the test subjects by the researchers. The subjects did not report seeing any of these. The subjects were asked whether they ‘saw’ the material that they did not ‘see’. The subjects appeared to ‘see’ what they actually did not ‘see’. But then this could neither be confirmed, nor could it be verified whether the subjects were either mistaken or even lying about seeing the flashed messages.

By Evgheny Stivenson (Self Growth)

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A step closer to reading the mind

Scientists say for the first time they have understood someone’s thoughts by looking at what their brain is doing.

The hippocampus is widely known to be integral to

memory, but researchers say they now see just how images are stored and recalled in this part of the brain.

By (BBC News)

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Scientists extract images directly from brain

Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.

By Pink Tentacle

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