The Future of Brain Imaging

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

This technology is obviously in the very early stages, but what sort of applications do you see it being used for? The kind of straightforward application that we would love to see this used for is as an assistive device. There are plenty of reasons why people might have damaged parts of the brain that would enable them to speak.

For the first time, researchers have found a way to non-invasively translate a person’s thoughts into text. Using fMRI scans and an AI-based decoder trained on a precursor to ChatGPT, the system can reconstruct brain activity to interpret the gist of a story someone is listening to, watching or even just imagining telling. Ian Sample speaks to one of the team behind the breakthrough, the neuroscientist Dr Alex Huth, to find out how it works, where they hope to use it, and whether our mental privacy could soon be at risk. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod