It's not clickbait when that's exactly the direction the current research is following in trying to convert signals from the brain into text. (Science Daily: Can a brain-computer interface convert your thoughts to text?)
There's not as much sci fi potential in this as we might hope since the subject has to be hard-wired to the computer for the signals to be read. The research has not yet managed the translation but they are driving toward it.
In their review, Herff and co-author, Dr. Tanja Schultz, compare the pros and cons of using various brain imaging techniques to capture neural signals from the brain and then decode them to text.
The technologies include functional MRI and near infrared imaging that can detect neural signals based on metabolic activity of neurons, to methods such as EEG and magnetoencephalography (MEG) that can detect electromagnetic activity of neurons responding to speech. One method in particular, called electrocorticography or ECoG, showed promise in Herff's study.
There's not as much sci fi potential in this as we might hope since the subject has to be hard-wired to the computer for the signals to be read. The research has not yet managed the translation but they are driving toward it.
In their review, Herff and co-author, Dr. Tanja Schultz, compare the pros and cons of using various brain imaging techniques to capture neural signals from the brain and then decode them to text.
The technologies include functional MRI and near infrared imaging that can detect neural signals based on metabolic activity of neurons, to methods such as EEG and magnetoencephalography (MEG) that can detect electromagnetic activity of neurons responding to speech. One method in particular, called electrocorticography or ECoG, showed promise in Herff's study.
- Science Daily
It's not yet the ideal science with a cop spy beam which can read your thoughts ... but give them time (larfs).
How about some sci fi in which they can wire you since cops can hook you up to a lie detector now but this science can create the Big Daddy of All Lie Detectors when the result won't just be lines on a graph but your words. Say there, Heavy Gangster, you are so busted and by your own words and thoughts.
The dream date on this one is the the cop spy beam which can read your mind but managing MRI data with a spy beam of some type isn't science but PFM (i.e. Pure Fucking Magic). That one doesn't seems so likely but a junior G-Man can dream.
How about a possible health device when you have some sort of wearable appliance the brain reader machine can contact. Even if you can't talk, it may be able to detect what you are trying to say. This is for that old commercial scenario in which 'I've fallen and I can't get up' but it considers maybe you whacked your head or some such. It's thin but some medical dreams should be ok too.
How about we fall back to the Big Daddy of All Lie Detectors and use it on the witness stand in courtrooms. Now that would be big, big fun. Check out that O.J. Simpson trial now, huh?
Best of all is how this applies to possible speech therapy protocols in which the afflicted person may know the world s/he tries to say but has lost the ability to form it to say it. I have lived intimately with this precise situation and it's one of the most heartbreaking possible so what if the mind reader machine could have read his thoughts and spoken for him. Conceivably it could even be designed such that it's capable of providing the therapy in terms of analysis of whatever the patient said and correspondingly, via its clever AI interface, suggesting directions in trying to voice the words.
WEBSTER was the software I wrote thirty years ago for a much less insightful approach since all possible at the time was to function as recitalist so my ol' Dad could relearn by rote. How about if WEBSTER knew what he was trying to say ... yep ... that brought some surprise tears. This is some sci fi which really could happen.
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