Mapping the Mind's Eye
From: Discover - May 2001 - page 11
By: Josie Glausiusz

Mind reading is poised to make a remarkable leap from the carnival to the
laboratory. Using magnetic resonance imaging, Kathleen O'Craven of the Rotman
Research Institute at Toronto's Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care and Nancy
Kanwisher of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have pinpointed two
areas of the brain that are excited when people look at faces or places. The
researchers found that the corresponding area activates almost as strongly as
when subjects merely thing about one or the other. With careful reading of
the brain scans, they can determine whether a subject is imagining a face or
a place 85% of the time. 

Fear not the thought police, however, "We can't determine whether people
think that communists are bad," says O'Craven. Rather, she suspects the work
will aid communication with people incapacitated by stroke. "If we read them
the names of people or places and saw a differentiation between the two brain
areas, we could interpret that to mean they understand what we're saying."

http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/bcfg-bit110600.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/11/001110073236.htm
http://www.discovery.com/news/briefs/20001102/hu_reu_brain.html
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2000/mindseye.html
http://fyi.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/11/02/brain.imagining.reut/
http://exn.ca/stories/1999/10/27/56.asp
http://www.shriver.org/Research/IRC/CDCN/Staff/O%27Craven.htm
