Okay, great: we can control Our phones with speech recognition and our television sets with gesture recognition. But those technologies don't work in all situations for all people. So I say, forget about those crude beginnings; what we really want is thought recognition.

As I found out during research for a recent NOVA episode, it mostly appears that brain-computer interface (BCI) technology has not advanced very far just yet. For example, I tried to make a toy helicopter fly by thinking “up” as I wore a $300 commercial EEG headset. It barely worked.

Such “mind-reading” caps are quick to put on and noninvasive. They listen, through your scalp, for the incredibly weak remnants of electrical signals from your brain activity. But they're lousy at figuring out where in your brain they originated. Furthermore, the headset software didn't even know that I was thinking “up.” I could just as easily have thought “goofy” or “shoelace” or “pickle”—whatever I had thought about during the 15-second training session.

There are other noninvasive brain scanners—magnetoencephalography, positron-emission tomography and near-infrared spectroscopy, and so on—but each also has its trade-offs.

Of course, you can implant sensors inside someone's skull for the best readings of all; immobilized patients have successfully manipulated computer cursors and robotic arms using this approach. Still, when it comes to controlling everyday electronics, brain surgery might be a tough sell.

My most astonishing discovery came at Carnegie Mellon University, where Marcel Just and Tom Mitchell have been using real-time functional MRI scanners to do some actual mind reading—or thought recognition, as they more responsibly call it.

As I lay in the fMRI, I saw 20 images on the screen (of a strawberry, skyscraper, cave, and so on). I was instructed to imagine the qualities of each object. The computer would try to figure out, from every two objects, the sequence of the two images I had just seen (whether strawberry had come before skyscraper, for example). It got them 100 percent right.

It turns out that, regardless of our native language or personal history, the same parts of our brain “light up” when we think of certain nouns. For “strawberry,” we might think “red,” “eat” or “hold in one hand.” The computer knows which brain areas are active for which qualities. The system can also guess what number you're thinking of or which of 15 emotions you're feeling.

Now, much needs to happen before we can change TV channels just by thinking “CBS.” In these early days, most BCI research is focused on how to help the disabled move or how to detect lies. And that work is raising plenty of questions about ethics, privacy and credibility. There will be other questions when thought recognition does come to gadgets. What happens if you get distracted when you're mind dictating an e-mail? Who wins if your spouse and you think about two different channels? And who's going to submit to an MRI to adjust music volume?

Just, who runs the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon, isn't worried about that part. “Our machine is a monster,” he told me. But “someday some biophysicist is going to develop some far smaller device, probably operating on a different principle.” At this point, it is too early to see where BCI will land or even when it will take off. And that's fine. After all, when somebody invented the wheel, he or she probably didn't imagine Acela trains, roller coasters or skateboards right away.

Still, I've had my mind read, and I'm a believer. There's something brewing, and millions of dollars are being poured into the effort to refine it. The next great interface breakthrough may tap into the electrical device you were born with.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE
Mind-control devices available now: ScientificAmerican.com/dec2012/pogue

This article was originally published with the title The Remote Control in Your Mind.

6 Comments

1. 1. Adam_Smith 10:18 AM 11/20/12

   Such experiments incidentally corroborate the hypothesis that the mind is basically physical and electrochemical in nature -- not an intangible "ghost in the machine". That latter unscientific view continues to be tenaciously held in some quarters, especially among philosophers who cannot conceive of how "qualia" can be material.

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2. 2. jayjacobus 11:04 AM 11/20/12

   I never said "ghost in the machine". I don't think that "ghost in the machine" is a definition for intangible.
   
   Nor is "lightbulb in the brain" a valid definition for tangible. You should know that qualia wouldn't exist without awareness no matter what you choose to call the location of awareness.

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3. 3. dpierce3 05:34 PM 11/20/12

   Multiple levels of complexity here. Our consciousness and particularly our willful thoughts including our "wisdom" and calculations are highly modulated by other areas - notably lower brain function. Think a girl then modulate that thought with POM-c which can stimulate competitively in 3,4 or 5 directions depending on how you count. Add input from spinothalmic tracts which may ricochet and resound through the lower circuitry with only a filtered few % getting considered by the circuits to which you may have bonded your BCI. What you are likely to get for the first dozen iterations would seem to be a superficial and likely scolding grandmother living somewhere in the left pre-frontal area saying mostly - "I told you so..."

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4. 4. jayjacobus in reply to jayjacobus 09:01 AM 11/22/12

   Just to clarify: the "Qualia" of a machine are tangible. They are a monitor screen, a computer printout, electronic signals, etc. In that case the "Qualia" is tangible. In a human there is no monitor screen hence human qualia seems to be immaterial.

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5. 5. yorick_von_fortinbras 02:02 PM 11/27/12

   There is literature on an invention that would achieve what this fMRI-related real-time thought recognition does: http://amzn.to/Trt41m (After Delphi)
   
   Yes, it is science fiction, but don't many great ideas originate from fiction? By the way, the book also talks about how this could be distributed without mass surgery for all of civilization...:
   
   "the neural-pattern translation and broadcasting unit reads neural firings, calculates their exact Cartesian location in the brain and utilizes a complex mapping algorithm that compares each reading to the Common Pattern Model (CPM), which contains countless mappings or templates that include emotions, concepts and other items. It also periodically scans the entire brain to analyze non-uniform spatial distributions of different voltage-gated ionic channel types across the soma and dendritic membrane to read potential neural firings, i.e. to decode experiences. The Unit could also, based on these distributions, detect synapse strengths and current neural activity, which enables it to project things that one might do in the future or things that one is projected to be capable of doing. The Unit does not detect patterns in such a manner as “that pattern is a ‘dog,’” but at a less specific and more energy-defined level, it captures the ideas of an individual. In addition to these reading functionalities, the Unit can broadcast its findings to other Units integrated within the brains of others when a certain gateway is opened. This gateway is located within the visual cortex of the brain such that when eye contact is made with another wearer, the gateway becomes enabled, and the transfer can be completed."

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6. 6. jayjacobus in reply to yorick_von_fortinbras 10:09 AM 12/11/12

   It seems like it is technically possible for my wife and I to think the same thought at the same time just because we unwittingly transmit electrical signals to each other.

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