Decoding brainwaves lets scientists read minds

While currently in the realm of sci-fi fantasy, the ability to read people's minds has taken a step closer to reality thanks to neuroscientists at the University of Glasgow. Researchers at the Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology have been able to identify the type of information contained within certain brainwaves related to vision. Brainwaves ' the patterns of electrical activity created in the brain when it is engaged in different activities ' can easily be measured using electroencephalography (EEG). However, knowing exactly what information is encoded within them, and how that encoding takes place, is a mystery. Professor Philippe Schyns, Director of the Institute of Neurosciences & Psychology and the Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, who led the pioneering study, said: 'It's a bit like unlocking a scrambled television channel. Before, we could detect the signal but couldn't watch the content; now we can. 'How the brain encodes the visual information that enables us to recognise faces and scenes has long been a mystery. While we are able to detect EEG activity in certain areas of the brain when particular tasks are performed, we've not known what information is being carried in those brainwaves. 'What we have done is to find a way of decoding brainwaves to identify the messages within.' In order to decode some of these brainwaves, the scientists at Glasgow recruited six volunteers and presented them with images of people's faces, displaying different emotions such as happiness, fear and surprise. On different experimental trials, parts of the images were randomly covered so that for example, only the eyes or mouth were visible. The volunteers were then asked to identify the emotion being displayed. While engaged in this exercise the participants?