Reading Minds: Cheap Trick or a Scientific Ability
Whatever your opinion about Psychic Sally or Mystic Meg, to a certain extent, some claim that the human species are mind-readers. By our powers of reasoning based on past experiences, knowledge of emotions and catalogue of memories we try to make educated guesses about what the other person is thinking. Whether or not we are actually any good at reading other people is another question. Siegel (in his book) calls the skill of reading others a perceptual ability in which the brain creates maps to deduce the mental state of another person. According to him, It’s how we know when we are being; lied to or told the truth, manipulated or seduced. It allows us to negotiate and, compete or cooperate with others. From a more empirical perspective, years of research has been conducted in this area and, studies show that we humans are not actually that good at it. In a study by Ickes (1993) it was shown that only 20% of participants were able to accurately guess a stranger’s feelings. So if Humans are not effective at it, what makes scientific equipment so good at decoding internal vocalisations? Although it is not truly mind-reading, to a certain degree the following study showed that, we now have the ability to interpret words, even before they are spoken (Pasley et al. 2012). This very recent study with a small sample, but shows the researchers were able to reconstruct words using brain activity alone.
This study used 15 patients who were undergoing brain surgery. Whilst undergoing the surgery, patients were asked to listen to a mix of 47 real and made-up words as well as sentences. During the task, electrical signals from the brain were recorded by sensors placed in the lateral temporal cortex.
Specifically the electrodes were placed in the superior temporal gyrus as this is thought to be important in speech processing. The study showed that words are broken down into complex patterns of electrical activity and by using a mathematical system; researchers were able to decode it into a rough version of the word using a computer program.
The sound patterns (which can be seen above) showed that by using the mathematical system, researchers were able to recognise specific words just by looking at recordings of brain activity. The computer system managed to correctly identify 89% of the words, compared to the 50% identified by guessing.
So, a question to all you techy guys; could a mind-reading device become reality?
Although in its early stages this study does seem to suggest that a device could be invented that has the ability to translate thought into speech. A device which could, have huge benefits in its application. Once refined, it could be used to help those who cannot talk, communicate in the future, for instance, those with psychological or neurological disorders such as locked-in-syndrome and speech impediments.
Interesting Reads:
Empathetic Accuracy: Ickes (1993)
Science decodes internal voices
Pasley et al. (2012) Reconstructing Speech from Human Auditory Cortex
*images obtained from public sources – Google/ BBC News
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Allo,
This was really interesting to read.
Despite being in the early stages, understanding that scientists could potentially develop software that has the ability to read our minds, could have amazing possibilities. As you said above, helping those that cannot speak will be able to be understoood; but being the pessimist I am, I just assume that any device that could be somehow invented, in the distant future, to be ‘mind-reading’ could only have detrimental consequences i.e. our constant thoughts being randomly broadcast to the public. An experimentor will know, when you have lied to them and told them that their really tedious experiment consisting of pressing the ‘J’ key constantly was the ‘best, life-changing’ experiment that you have ever taken part in (and then they will hate you and make you do it again).
(Yet, my views are only the extreme, very unlikely possiblilities that probably will never occur)
Anyway, I think that we can already read minds, as you touched on above, through body-language. Byrne & Byrne (1991), argue that particular cells in our brains are sensitive to orientation and respond to this; this is why we can understand social behaviours and can understand if someone is upset or sad by the way they present themselves to us. This is easier in your friends than it is with random strangers, as you mentioned in the study above (ickes, 1993); participants were not as accurate when it came to accurately guessing the strangers’ feelings. This may be because they did not know the stranger and thus could not make an accurate interpretation of their feelings or it could have been to something more simpler; the participant may not have wanted to say that a random stranger was ‘miserable’, in fear that the stranger was actually happy but couldn’t help looking miserable, so the participants may have chosen to look wrong rather than look mean.
Overall, I think that the ‘mind-reading’ at the moment can be both a scientific ability as well as a cheap-trick. Hopefully in the future, fancy software will be invented to remove the association between brilliant brain-imaging software and Mystic-Meg.
🙂
I love the topic of your blog, a really different way of looking at research! In terms of mind reading, you could say that some of it is just pure intuition, for example if a mothers baby is crying, the mother automatically knows it needs some care, for example feeding. It’s true also that we as humans can relate and understand one and other to a certain extent. Ross Buck a professor for the University of Connecticut claims that mind reading has some pre-historic roots, that through the evolution of human beings, “mind reading” or understanding others became a developed trait to “maintain social order”. However mind readers themselves, or people how claim to mind readers, are often frowned upon, despite some believing them, many feel that they are just full of old wives tails, or that they just “read” information which could be generalised to anyone, for example, “the weather is really disappointing you at the moment”, an individual would be highly likely to agree with that if it was Winter! Scientifically children could be considered mind readers(Psychology Today*), as like their primary care givers, they too understand how others feel from a young age, for example its been said from age 2 a child can understand a other by the direction of their gaze! I think this is a great topic for debate, definitely one that has got me thinking!
* http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200708/mind-reading?page=3
Very interesting topic for blog. I would say mind reading , it could scientific as well. Mind reading involves the understanding of a person’s thought and emotion. By understanding body language and facial expression cues would allow us to interpret a person’s thought and emotion.On the external part which without looking into the brain, Paul Ekman, the famous research who did a lot of research on body language and facial expression. Paul Ekman summarized that there are some universal emotions such as angry, sadness, happy, worried, disgust and guiltiness. Besides that, by reading the non-verbal cues will allow us to detect deceptiveness which contributed the research in mind reading. He also contribute to coding of facial expression and body language on how to a person’s mind. For example, if a person who talk to you said that they are happy today but he gave a fake smile which you knew. Based on this inference, you would most likely knew that there are something that makes him to feel unhappy. In this case I would like to ask, are humans are born to have the ability to read mind? or are humans are learned to read mind? which something that we can look for. For more information about facial coding ,pls visit this website: paulekman.com
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I enjoy reading your blogs and this weeks was no different 🙂
For what you have said about how Siegel describes how we perceive others intentions, he has looked at a neurological basis to understanding body language. Desmond Morris and many others have described how we pick up on subtle hints that show a persons intentions, if their lying to you etc.
And this technology could potentially be extraordinary. Communication and lifestyle would drastically improve for people with trouble speaking and the research that could be done on children/ toddlers/ babies could potentially be ground breaking. confirming or disproving many fundamental theories we see as rather accurate today.
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There was a study that debunked Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) and Therapeutic Touch (a method of healing used by nurses in which practitioners do not touch the patients body) that was conducted by an 8 year old girl. The girl was Emily Rosa, and she conducted the study as a school project. She asked the participants to put their hands through a box, and then put her hand above on of the therapeutic touch practitioners to tell her which of their hands she was holding her hand over. The idea was that the therapeutic touch practitioners would sense Emily Rosa’s ‘energy field’ and answer correctly. The study found that the therapeutic touch practitioners got average scores of 44%, which is below the result expected by chance.
I think it is very telling that psychic claims and abilities such as therapeutic touch can be debunked by an 8 year old. Emily Rosa remains the youngest person to have research published in a research journal, and she is awesome. It still astounds me that people believe in these supernatural claims still in this day and age.
You can find Emily Rosa’s study here: http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/279/13/1005.full?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Close+look+at+therapeutic+touch&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT