What’s going on in the brain?

In his column, knowledge editor Niklaus Salzmann discusses news from the world of science. This time he looks at what can be read from brain activity.

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What was this person thinking? I often ask myself this question. The other day when I had to slam on the brakes with my bike because a car in front of me pushed into the roundabout.

Reading minds – is that possible? Basically, they are signals between nerve cells in the brain. The brain waves can be measured with sensors that are placed on the scalp or surgically placed directly on the surface of the brain. Other methods can also be used to measure blood flow and oxygen levels in different regions of the brain.

A team from the University of California has now managed to place the sensors for measuring brain activity much closer together than was previously possible. Instead of a centimeter, their sensors are only about a millimeter apart, so the resolution is a hundred times higher.

But can thoughts also be read from brain activity? Yes, the neurologist Niels Birbaumer claimed a few years ago: he recognized whether people who were completely paralyzed were thinking “yes” or “no”. However, Birbaumer had not properly documented the data – which calls the whole study into question.

What was he thinking? We do not know it. And even a look inside his brain could give us no information. According to the current status, thoughts cannot be read, so a higher resolution does not help either. That’s a good thing. Had the driver of the car in the roundabout known what I was thinking of her, she might have hit me on purpose.