fMRI mind-reading of faces

David Pescovitz 11:19 am Mon Mar 31, 2014

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Yale University researchers used brain scans to "read" and reconstruct the faces that individuals were picturing in their minds' eye. The scientists ran fMRI scans on six people as they looked at 300 different faces. Those scans enabled the creation of a database of facial features tied to specific brain response patterns. Then the subjects were shown faces they hadn't seen before. Based on the new fMRI data, a computer was able to generate good approximations of the face the subject was viewing.

“It is a form of mind reading,” said Marvin Chun, Yale professor of psychology, cognitive science and neurobiology who led the study.

The research will be published in the science journal NeuroImage, and an uncorrected proof is available here (only the abstract is free).

More in this Yale press release and Los Angeles Times article.

Previously:

• Brain scans reveal our mind movies?

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