Good news for those, who are not able speak or move; Researchers at Canada’s largest Children’s rehabilitation hospital have developed the prototype of a mind reading machine, with the goal to open the world of choice for children who are disabled to speak or move. Bloorview scientists had demonstrated the machine decoding a person’s preference for one of two drinks accurately in 80% trials.

            This is probably the first system that decodes preferences naturally from spontaneous thoughts. The machine measures the near infrared light intensity absorbed in brain tissues and study the infrared light brain image to decode the mind activities. The earlier versions of brain-computer interfaces needed training; but the infrared imaging technique demonstrated the machine with 9 adult who didn’t received any training, they were asked to rate 8 drinks prior to the study.

            The participants in the experiment had to wear a headband, fitted with fiber-optic. It floods the pere-frontal brain cortex with infrared light. They made the mental decision about their preference among two drinks shown on a computer screen. The computer thus studied the unique brain activity pattern associated with a preference for each drink and the researchers predicted which drink the participant liked with 80% accuracy.

            The oxygen in the blood increases when the brain is active, and depending on the oxygen concentration in the blood, the brain absorbs light. The brain activity in different people will be different for the same thing and thereby the infrared image pattern will also differ. This forms the basis for infrared brain mapping based mind reading.

            Preference is the basis for everyday decision. So if a system is designed that can read the preference directly from the brain; that will open up the world of choice to the disabled children who are unable to speak or move. The brain is so complex that it will never allow decoding a person’s thoughts, but if we limit the Context that is, limit the questions and answers, then the mind reading becomes possible. As the future expansion researches are going on to create a wireless near infrared sensor which can be fitted on the forehead.