EDITORIAL – Mind reading technology

The next time you think about heading over to Carnegie Mellon, beware: They might be able to… The next time you think about heading over to Carnegie Mellon, beware: They might be able to read your mind.

A recent Newsweek article reported that Carnegie Mellon researchers have been able to detect distinctive brain activity patterns associated with certain objects.

Researchers showed people drawings of five tools (think hammer, drill, etc.) and five dwellings (igloo, castle, etc.). They were then asked to think about each object’s purpose or use while lying still in a neuroimaging device, which tracked activity in different parts of their brains. And the results were, well, mind-boggling.

The researchers reported that each object evoked a distinctive brain activity pattern – distinct enough that the computer could tell with 78 percent accuracy when someone was thinking about a hammer and not a drill, for example.

The activity patterns in response to a particular object were very similar from one subject to another – a finding that suggests a commonality in how different people’s brains represent the same object. This finding, in particular, suggests the possibility of a universal mind-reading dictionary.

This research, while groundbreaking, is still in the early stages. These types of analyses will have to be replicated by independent labs before the results found at CMU can even be accepted. And it will take years, maybe even decades, for scientists to detect enough brain activity-thought correlations to develop the beginnings of a universal mind-reading dictionary. But the implications could be huge if they did.

This type of research, while abstract in theory, could have many real-world applications. One possibility could be using the technology to advance medical treatments and procedures, such as in translating a quadriplegic’s thoughts to move a prosthetic limb.

Analysts have also suggested the technology’s potential use in interrogating suspects and witnesses in court cases. But until this technique can be performed with 100 percent accuracy, we stand against its use in criminal procedure.

This early development of mind-reading technology is a great achievement for the scientific community and Carnegie Mellon, and it’s also a great achievement for our city. The brainpower, research money and medical and scientific advancements fueling into and coming out of our city, courtesy of Pitt and Carnegie Mellon universities, have helped to change the perception of Pittsburgh from a blue-collar, working class city to an intellectual powerhouse.

And until our local politicians can aid Pittsburgh’s lagging economy and bring in more businesses, we will continue looking to our city’s universities as the major area of growth.

If Downtown is the legs of the city, and the Steelers are the heart, then Oakland is definitely the brain – even if we can’t yet read its mind.