Can Electrical Signals Be Converted to Sound and Used to Read Minds?

[Lokesh7890]

Hi friends I'm new here
I just want to know if we can convert electrical signals to sound

 

[russ_watters]

That's what a speaker does.

[thread moved to electrical engineering]

 

[Lokesh7890]

I'm asking that if we can convert brain's electric signals to sound I.e.. So that we can hear their inner thoughts

 

[mfb]

You can computer-generate sound based on some measurements of electrodes, but that doesn't mean you can "hear thoughts". You'll get a random-looking pattern of neurons firing.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Couldn't this type of program eventually lead to inner thought recognition?
http://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/

 

[mfb]

If you map the whole brain activity, calibrate it with known images and throw tons of highly sophisticated software in, you can get a very rough estimate of the visual input of the brain.

There is a rough correlation between the field of vision and spatial brain areas, so getting some rough idea which areas are active is possible (which you can see in the video). Sufficient to see that there is a face, but not more so far. Such a correlation does not exist for thoughts, at least no correlation is known. And even if there would be, it would need a huge amount of calibration to map it.
There are studies that monitored individual neurons, and apparently it can happen that those are highly specific - one study (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7045/full/nature03687.html, news article) found a neuron that responded to Halle Berry (pictures or her name written somewhere), but to nothing else tested.

Sure, a computer can learn such a correlation and then play a sound file where someone says "Halle Berry", but I don't think the question was meant that way.

 

[Lokesh7890]

So there is no chance of hearing other's thoughts through this computer programming thing? Only we can estimate what others are thinking? and I think it would take so much time for us to even estimate what he /she thinks

 

[mfb]

So there is no chance of hearing other's thoughts through this computer programming thing?

Not in the way you probably imagine. Brains are not operating with sound.

Only we can estimate what others are thinking?

Not even that (at least not yet). There is a test subject where you can reliably check if that test subject thinks of Halle Berry, another one where you can check "if that persons thinks of an opera house, we can make an educated guess if it is the one in Sydney or not", and a few more isolated cases. Certainly of scientific interest, but most of the time humans are not thinking of Halle Berry or the Sydney Opera House.