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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 2: Mind-Reading Implants Tested on Monkeys

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology announced recently that they developed a brain implant capable of reading the minds of monkeys with a 67-88 percent rate of accuracy, reports New Scientist magazine. The researchers tested this implant on a group of monkeys.

The implants could not tell the researchers in words exactly what the monkeys were thinking. The technology is not that advanced. But the implants did correctly predict which direction a monkey was planning to reach for an object 67 percent of the time. When the object the monkey was reaching for was a reward, like fruit juice, the accuracy of the prediction went up to 88 percent. That told researchers that the implant not only "read" the monkey's mind enough to anticipate where it was going to reach, but how happy the monkey was about what it was reaching for!

The implants were placed in a part of the monkeys' brains above the ear, in a section of the brain called the parietal cortex, which is associated with control of movement and visual memory. The implants were able to detect where the monkeys were planning to reach even when they were not looking at the thing they wanted. Scientists think that the results of this study could lead to the development of brain implants that help paralyzed people or that are able to truly read minds. The results of the study were originally published in Science Magazine.

--Written by Nia Williams

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