Mind reading. It's like a book that we will learn to read.

By: Oasis Team

Mind reading has become a skill closer to the real world after a study by University College London (UCL), published in the journal Current BiologyThe research, conducted by professors Eleanor Maguire and Demis Hassabis, indicates that it is possible to "read" a person's memories simply by examining their brain activity. According to the scientists, our memories are recorded in regular patterns, a discovery that contradicts current scientific thinking.

Eleanor and Hassabis had already investigated the role of the hippocampus, a small area of ​​the brain considered essential for navigation, memory recall, and the imagination of future events. In a study conducted a few years ago, she examined the brains of London taxi drivers, who spend years learning the complex street map of the British capital, known as "The Knowledge." Eleanor showed that, in the brains of these drivers, an area at the back of the hippocampus was enlarged, which seemed to indicate it as the region involved in learning location and direction.

The new study confirms that patterns related to spatial memory are located in the same area, suggesting that the back of the hippocampus plays a key role in the representation of spatial environments. In it, scientists were able to show how this brain area brings memories to the surface. This is possible with the fundamental participation of specific neurons in the hippocampus, called "localization cells" (place cellsAccording to Eleanor and Hassabis, when we move, location cells are activated to tell us where we are.

Changes in blood flow

The research team used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, which measures changes in blood flow within the brain, to examine the activity of localization cells while volunteers moved within a virtual reality environment. The information obtained was then analyzed by a computer algorithm developed by Hassabis.

 “We asked if we could see interesting patterns in neural activity that could tell us what the participants were thinking, or, in this case, where they were,” said Eleanor. “Surprisingly, just by seeing the brain information we could predict, exactly, where they were in the virtual reality environment. In other words, we could 'read' their spatial memories.”

Previous studies conducted with rats offered no clues as to the existence of a structure in which memories are stored. That is why Eleanor and Hassabis's research was surprising. She said: “The fMRI machines allowed us to see the broader picture of what is happening in people's brains. By observing the activity of tens of thousands of neurons, we could see that there must be a functional structure – a pattern – to the way these memories are encoded. Otherwise, it simply wouldn't have been possible to carry out our experiment.”

Memory eroded by illness

The scientist believes that this research opens up a range of possibilities regarding how real memories are encoded through neurons, allowing us to go beyond spatial memories and examine richer recollections of the past or visualizations of the future. “Understanding how we humans recall our memories is essential to helping us learn how information is processed in the hippocampus and how our memories are eroded by diseases like Alzheimer's,” observes Hassabis. “It is also a small step towards the idea of ​​mind reading, because simply by observing neural activity we can tell what someone is thinking.” He estimates that it would take at least ten years before a technology capable of reading someone's thoughts in a single session, even against the will of the person being examined, is developed.

Eleanor also envisions a long scientific road ahead before it's possible to "see" inside someone's head. "We can rest easy in terms of mind reading. Although technically in this study we could predict someone's spatial memory from their brain activity, there was nothing intrusive about what we did. It's not like we could put someone in an MRI machine and suddenly read their thoughts. It's a process that's still in a very preliminary stage. It's probably quite far from having social, ethical, and probably forensic implications." In any case, a breach in the Pandora's box of mind reading has already been opened – so much so that Hassabis considers it useful to begin discussing the ethical implications of this possibility.