英国研究人员开发出一款计算机软件，通过扫描大脑解读思想，成功率近五成。这意味着科学家在解读人类思想领域又进一步。这项结果11日刊载于《当代生物学》。
读取思想
伦敦大学学院研究人员让10名志愿者连续15次观看3部电影短片，每部时长7秒，主题都是日常生活场景。研究人员随后要求志愿者回忆短片内容，同时利用功能性核磁共振成像仪（fMRI）扫描他们脑部。
通过计算机软件分析数据，研究人员发现，志愿者回忆每部短片时，大脑活跃部位不同。这样，研究人员根据大脑活动模式测出志愿者回想哪部短片，准确率约为45%。
趣味科学网站11日援引研究负责人马丁·查德威克的话报道：“这个算法能够测出志愿者在回想哪部电影，（准确率）远远超出我们预期。这显示我们的记忆存储有规律可循。”
情景记忆
另一名研究人员、认知神经科学家埃莉诺·马圭尔说，先前研究主要关注解读基础记忆。研究人员通过扫描研究对象脑部，获知对方刚看见的一个数字，算出他想要敲出的字母或者曾经去过的地方。
“更有趣的是解读情景记忆，一种关于日常生活的复杂记忆，包括我们在哪里、在做什么、感觉如何等更多信息，”马圭尔说。(生物谷Bioon.com)
生物谷推荐原文出处：
Current Biology, doi：10.1016/j.cub.2010.01.053
Decoding Individual Episodic Memory Traces in the Human Hippocampus
Martin J. Chadwick, Demis Hassabis, Nikolaus Weiskopf, Eleanor A. Maguire
In recent years, multivariate pattern analyses have been performed on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, permitting prediction of mental states from local patterns of blood oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal across voxels [1, 2,1, 2]. We previously demonstrated that it is possible to predict the position of individuals in a virtual-reality environment from the pattern of activity across voxels in the hippocampus [3]. Although this shows that spatial memories can be decoded, substantially more challenging, and arguably only possible to investigate in humans [4], is whether it is feasible to predict which complex everyday experience, or episodic memory, a person is recalling. Here we document for the first time that traces of individual rich episodic memories are detectable and distinguishable solely from the pattern of fMRI BOLD signals across voxels in the human hippocampus. In so doing, we uncovered a possible functional topography in the hippocampus, with preferential episodic processing by some hippocampal regions over others. Moreover, our results imply that the neuronal traces of episodic memories are stable (and thus predictable) even over many re-activations. Finally, our data provide further evidence for functional differentiation within the medial temporal lobe, in that we show the hippocampus contains significantly more episodic information than adjacent structures.
