fmri

05.17.08

Spacing Out and Slipping Up

A better understanding of how zoning out leads to mistakes could help scientists develop "wake-up" systems
By Matt Ransford Posted 04.22.2008 at 11:43 am 1 Comment

We probably didn't need a formalized brain study to tell us that we zone out during repetitive and/or monotonous tasks and that mistakes are more commonly made when we do. That much we've figured out for ourselves. Fortunately, though, the study by scientists at the University of Bergen in Norway and Southampton University in the UK discovered something else about those times when we space.

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Computers That Read Your Mind

A new software shows promise for predicting human thought patterns—time to whip out the tin foil hat?
By Matt Ransford Posted 03.06.2008 at 8:59 am 0 Comments

Tin Foil Hat: No need to whip out that tin foil hat quite yet. Photo by iStockphoto
Get out your tin foil hats, paranoids. Your fears are one step closer to reality. Berkeley scientists are reporting in Nature that they have developed software, which, in conjunction with an fMRI scanner, can read your mind. And 80 to 90% of the time, the machine was right. Okay, settle down. These are early reports and there are more than a few caveats.

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