It may sound like science fiction, but mind-reading equipment is much closer to becoming a reality than most people can imagine. A new study at D'Or Institute for Research and Education used a Magnetic Resonance (MR) machine to read participants' minds and find out what song they listened to. The study, published in Scientific Reports, contributes to the improvement of technology and paves the way for new research into the reconstruction of auditory imagination and inner speech. In the clinical domain, it can improve brain computer interfaces to establish communication with patients with locked-in syndrome.

Brain and computer

In the experiment, six volunteers heard 40 pieces of classical music, rock, pop, jazz and others. The neural fingerprint of each song on the participants' brains was captured by the MR machine while a computer learned to identify the brain patterns provoked by each piece of music. Musical functions such as tonality, dynamics and rhythm were taken into account by the computer. After that, researchers expected that the computer would be able to do the opposite: identify which song participants were listening to, based on their brain activity. That's a technique known as brain decoding. When faced with two options, the computer showed up to 85% accuracy in identifying the right song, which is a great performance, compared to previous studies. Researchers then pushed the test even harder by giving not two but ten options (for example, one good and nine error) to the computer. In this scenario, the computer correctly identified the number in 74% of decisions.

“Computers will be able to translate our musical thoughts into songs”

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