Scary? Or cool? The science of mind-reading (by performing an MRI of the brain while the subject thinks about different things) is advancing rapidly.

[link]

Less than three years ago, it was a big deal when studies measured brain activity in people looking at a grating slanted either left or right; fMRI patterns in the visual cortex revealed which grating the volunteers saw. At the time, neuroscientist Geraint Rees of University College London said, "If our approach could be expanded upon, it might be possible to predict what someone was thinking or seeing from brain activity alone." Last year Haynes and colleagues found that even intentions leave a telltale trace in the brain. When people thought about either adding two numbers or subtracting them, an fMRI scan of their prefrontal cortex detected activity characteristic of either.

Now research has broken the "content" barrier. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University showed people drawings of five tools (hammer, drill and the like) and five dwellings (castle, igloo …) and asked them to think about each object's properties, uses and anything else that came to mind. Meanwhile, fMRI measured activity throughout each volunteer's brain. As the scientists report this month in the journal PLoS One, the activity pattern evoked by each object was so distinctive that the computer could tell with 78 percent accuracy when someone was thinking about a hammer and not, say, pliers. CMU neuroscientist Marcel Just thinks they can improve the accuracy (which reached 94 percent for one person) if people hold still in the fMRI and keep their thoughts from drifting to, say, lunch.

Plus mind-control is starting be become possible. I read in a book recently of an experiment where subjects were told to select one of two things (I forget what) at random. This was repeated many times. The experimenters then applied a strong magnetic field to a specific part of the brain while the person made his/her random choice, and found that one of the choices suddenly become much more common than the other. (eta: and the subject still perceived that s/he was choosing completely at random.)

We Canadians don't have any winter long weekends. It's an outrage!

Oh, and from my above link:

As always, the results have to be replicated by independent labs before they can be accepted. But this is the first time any mind-reading technique has achieved such specificity. Remarkably, the activity patterns—from visual areas to movement area to regions that encode abstract ideas like the feudal associations of a castle—were eerily similar from one person to another. "This establishes, as never before, that there is a commonality in how different people's brains represent the same object," said CMU's Tom Mitchell.

So I guess maybe we all do experience, say, the color red the same way....

But but but, some people have birthdays in February. It is a perfectly lovely month. Shortest month. President's day. Mardi Gras. My birthday.

Olivia was born in February. It was a good month for us.

I'm window shopping for hall trees. I fell in love with this and this but they're too far to pick up. I've looked at contemporary ones but DH wants something a little more elaborate.

I did find an adorable mini rocker on craigslist but I hate to drive all the way to Oshkosh for such a small piece. Still, it's cute.

ASCII animated cat: [link]

Okay, that cat is awesome.

Aw, Laura. The curse of being born in February is that we are doomed to always being told how much everyone hates our birth month. Oh, and we always get the worst picture in the calendar. Seriously, I'm not kidding.

The cat really neat.

So I guess maybe we all do experience, say, the color red the same way....

Nooooooooooo. Don't make my mind start on that question again when it is bedtime.

Oh, and we always get the worst picture in the calendar.

This may be why I chose such a nice picture for my family calendar. We have quite a crowd of birthdays in February including 3 people on the 27th. [link]

eta: the picture is my mom's place in Otter Lake.

A very well-dressed monkey: [link]