A new device has been created that can analyse the brainwaves of non-verbal, paralysed patients and turn them into sentences on a computer screen in real time. The'mind-reading' machine is capable of decoding brain activity as a person silently attempts to spell out words phonetically to create full sentences. Experts say their neuroprosthesis speech device has the potential to restore communication to people who cannot speak or type due to paralysis. Previous research had shown that a similar system was able to decode up to 50 words. However, this was limited to a specific vocabulary and the participant had to attempt to speak the words out loud, which required significant effort, given their paralysis.

While study participants were hooked up to the fMRI, the team at Radboud displayed photographs of individual humans and asked participants to study them closely. The information from the fMRI was fed into a powerful AI algorithm called a Generative Adversarial Network, or GAN. Based on the neurological data received, the GAN was able to construct photo-like images similar to those shown to the participants. While the visual stimuli and AI-constructed images aren't perfect matches--in one pair, a man ages a bit, while in another a woman goes from strawberry to bleach blonde--they're surprisingly close.

An artificial intelligence (AI) institute in Hefei, in China's Anhui province, says it has developed software that can gauge the loyalty of Communist Party members – something that, if true, would be considered a breakthrough, but has sparked public outcry. Analysts said China has improved its AI-powered surveillance, using big data, machine learning, facial recognition and AI to "get into the brains and minds of its people," building what many call a draconian digital dictatorship. The institute posted a video called "The Smart Political Education Bar," on July 1 to boast about its "mind-reading" software, which it said would be used on party members to "further solidify their determination to be grateful to the party, listen to the party and follow the party." In the video, a subject was seen scrolling through online material that promotes party policy at a kiosk, where the institute said its AI software was monitoring his reaction to see how attentive he was to the party's thought education. The post, however, was taken down shortly after sparking a public outcry among Chinese netizens.

When it comes to things like showing us the right search results at the right time, A.I. can often seem like it's darn close to being able to read people's minds. But engineers at Russian robotics research company Neurobotics Lab have shown that artificial intelligence really can be trained to read minds -- and guess what videos users are watching based entirely on their brain waves alone. "We have demonstrated that observing visual scenes of different content affects the human brain waves, so that we can distinguish the scene categories from [one another] by analyzing the corresponding EEG (electroencephalogram) signal," Anatoly Bobe, an engineer of Neurorobotics Lab in Moscow, told Digital Trends. "We [then] created a system for reconstructing the images from EEG signal features." The researchers trained the A.I. by showing it video clips of different objects, alongside the brain wave recordings of the people watching them. This allowed the deep learning neural network to learn the features commonly seen in brain wave activity when people were viewing particular types of video content.

This technology could be put in smartphones that understand and predict our behaviour, potentially offering personalised support. They could also be used by robot companions for older people, or in self-driving cars and interactive video games. Researchers found the machine (labelled'our classifier') is currently between seven and 15 per cent better than random chance at predicting neuroticism, extroversion, agreeablesness and conscientiousness.

Think that Google's search algorithms are good at reading your mind? That's nothing compared to a new artificial intelligence research project coming out of Japan, which can analyze a person's brain scans and provide a written description of what they have been looking at. To generate its captions, the artificial intelligence is given an fMRI brain scan image, taken while a person is looking at a picture. It then generates a written description of what they think the person was viewing. An illustration of the level of complexity it can offer is: "A dog is sitting on the floor in front of an open door" or "a group of people standing on the beach."

Think that Google's search algorithms are good at reading your mind? That's nothing compared to a new artificial intelligence research project coming out of Japan, which can analyze a person's brain scans and provide a written description of what they have been looking at. To generate its captions, the artificial intelligence is given an fMRI brain scan image, taken while a person is looking at a picture. It then generates a written description of what they think the person was viewing. An illustration of the level of complexity it can offer is: "A dog is sitting on the floor in front of an open door" or "a group of people standing on the beach."

Purdue University researcher Zhongming Liu has been studying the inner workings of the mind for nearly two decades. His goal is to understand how our brains form mental images based on what we see around us. It's one of the most complex questions in neuroscience, and Liu tells Inverse he and his team just got a major assist in understanding human brains from a machine mind. "I've been working on this for years," says Liu. "And it wasn't until now that I've been able to get a substantial breakthrough with the help of A.I." As Liu and his fellow researchers detail in the journal Cerebral Cortex, they used an A.I. neural network -- the same basic tech used in computers and phones for facial recognition -- to interpret the results of MRI scans of people watching videos. The A.I. then revealed what parts of the brain were responding to what images.

Three people with paralysis have learned to type by thought alone using a brain implant – at the fastest speeds recorded using such a system. Two have motor neurone disease, also known as ALS – a degenerative disorder that destroys neurons associated with movement – while the other has a spinal cord injury. All three have weakness or paralysis in all of their limbs. There is a chance that those with ALS will eventually lose the ability to speak, too, says Jaimie Henderson, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University Medical Center in California. People who have lost the ability to talk may be offered devices that allow them to select letters on a screen using head, cheek or eye movements. This is how Stephen Hawking communicates, for example.

MRI scans can now be used to read emotions in the human brain, claim scientists. A new study shows that the brain-scanning technology can pinpoint specific emotions while a person is experiencing them. Researchers from Duke University claim to be able to'see' these emotions flickering across the brain. 'It's getting to be a bit like mind-reading,' said Kevin LaBar, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke. 'Earlier studies have shown that functional MRI can identify whether a person is thinking about a face or a house. 'Our study is the first to show that specific emotions like fear and anger can be decoded from these scans as well.'