Can Computers Read Thoughts?

April 25, 2010 - PRLog -- Many a time you have sat at your computer and silently screamed in frustration. A quick push of the wrong key and the computer runs on to perform as it was told, but not what you wanted it to do. All this might be about to change.

The most recent technical innovation from Intel Laboratories makes use of brain scans to discover what a user is thinking about. This will bring thought-based user interfaces to be not as far-fetched as many people believe.

The technology is able to scan and reveal which parts of a person’s brain is being activated, by using software analyses functional fMRI. Intel Labs researcher, Dean Pomerleau revealed that during tests the computer estimated with a 90% accuracy, which of two words a person was thinking about.

The combined project with Intel Laboratories, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh is as yet under development, but it could one day assist the severely physically disabled to communicate.

He said “The vision is being able to interface to information, to your devices and to other people without having an intermediary device”. Pomerleau sees it as one of the first steps of being able to control technology with our minds.

For the moment the scanner can only be applied with prohibitively expensive and bulky FMRI equipment. As yet it hasn’t been modified to analyze abstract thinking.

Intel’s major focus is in computer processors and other hardware. However it often develops and reveals new technologies in an effort to motivate the market. Some of its other innovations include:

•The Intel Reader is a mobile handheld device, the size of a book, that takes pictures of printed material and converts them into digital text that can be read aloud to the user. Not only will this assist the visually impaired user, but also users with dyslexia.
•Lightning Fast Movie Donwloads, a new high-speed optical cable, a thin optical fibre about the width of a human hair. In just 17 minutes the entire library of Congress, (10 terabytes of information) could be downloaded.
•3D Scanning with a Digital Camera, that will allow amateurs to create 3D visual content, using a standard digital camera and a PC.
•The Dispute Finder aims to automatically inform a user when information they encounter is disputed by another source on the Internet.

About Can Computers Read Thoughts?
For more information: http://www.tropicpost.com/computers-than-can-read-thoughts/

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