A computer model has been developed that can predict what word you are thinking of. The model may help to resolve questions about how the brain processes words and language, and might even lead to techniques for decoding people’s thoughts.
The team then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 9 volunteers as they looked at images of the nouns. The researchers then fed the model 58 of the 60 nouns to train it. For each noun, the model sorted through a trillion-word body of text to find how it was related to the 25 verbs, and how that related to the activation pattern.
