Scientists learn how to read our minds

Research into brain imaging helped an Irish woman based at University College London to win the Royal Society's €37,500 Franklin Prize

THE FANCIFUL notion of mind-reading has moved from science fiction to science fact. A research group in London led by an Irish scientist has used brain scans and a computer to decipher a person's thoughts.

The work forms part of a major effort to understand how human memory works, where it happens in the brain and whether knowing such things might lead to better treatments for Alzheimer's and brain-damaged patients.

Research efforts by Prof Eleanor Maguire at University College London last week earned her the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award. The distinction, which includes a medal and a cash award of €37,500, also requires the winner to give a public lecture on their work.

"I was delighted, it is quite a prestigious prize and I wasn't expecting it," says Maguire. "It helps highlight the work done by women in science."

Maguire's work on human memory has proved startlingly successful. Leading a team of six, she and colleagues have developed a mathematical algorithm that can be used to read people's thoughts.

The work depends on conducting MRI-based functional brain scans where the scanning equipment is able to see which parts of the brain "light up" in response to a stimulus, Maguire explains. This is an indication that work - a thought or a memory - is happening at that place at that moment.

"I am trying to understand how the human brain allows us to form memories, store memories and recollect memories," she says. "It is a complicated question."

Groups all around the world are pursuing this research and the focus is on a small body within the brain, the hippocampus. It measures no more than about 4cm by 1cm, but has proven to be essential to memory, she says. "It is really central to forming new memories and recollecting the past."

Recent discoveries using MRI scans have shown that the hippocampus and associated nearby structures allow memories to be formed, but these areas are also fundamental to our ability to navigate through space, to speculation on future events and also to imagination.

It was noteworthy that the same parts of the brain were responsible for looking backward but also forward in space and in time, she believes. "There is this whole core area in the brain responsible for these critical functions. Our challenge is to see how the brain deals with these basic functions and how these brain areas connect with each other."

Very sophisticated MRI scanning and computers are helping to explain this complex process. The scans can read brain activity down to a space about 1.5mm cubed, but they are now looking for a resolution down to below 1mm.

Her team conducts a range of tests, for example asking the subject to think about specific things or to recall a memory, and this is where the mind-reading comes into play. "We are sort of getting involved in mind-reading to understand what a person was thinking," she says.

They are also using virtual reality systems that allow a person to imagine navigating through London while their brains undergo functional scans.

Patterns of thought begin to emerge and these are analysed by computer programmes known as "classifiers". These rely on self-learning and improve as they analyse more brain scans, Maguire says.

In one test the virtual reality system takes the subject through specific parts of London, and the classifier studies the individual's brain response. "The classifier was able to tell where the person was during the test just by reading out the brain responses," Maguire says. The system was up to 90 per cent accurate in reading where a person was in the virtual reality London at any given time just by analysing their thoughts.

They are also finding that the classifiers are able to see similarities in these thought patterns between subjects, which suggests that there is a common response to a given stimuli. Very specific parts of the brain respond, but the pattern of response is the same across subjects. "It is a very exciting time in the field of memory at the moment."

Maguire received her BSc from University College Dublin, did a Master's in Britain before completing a PhD while at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.

Rosalind Franklin was an accomplished scientist whose crystallography images of DNA were central to helping James Watson and Francis Crick discover the double helix structure of DNA.