Reading Human Thoughts
This article was originally written and submitted as part of a Canada 150 Project, the Innovation Storybook, to crowdsource stories of Canadian innovation with partners across Canada. The content has since been migrated to Ingenium’s Channel, a digital hub featuring curated content related to science, technology and innovation.
In 2013, Lorina Naci led a study at Western University’s world-renowned Brain & Mind Institute, which, for the first time, used a simple test of attention and neuroimaging to read human thought via brain activity when conveying specific “yes” or “no” answers. Naci and her colleagues Rhodri Cusack, Vivian Z. Jia and Adrian Owen are now utilizing this method to communicate with behaviorally non-responsive patients, who may be misdiagnosed as being in a vegetative state.