Peering Deeper into the Brain

The New York Times reports today on analytic techniques to make inferences about brain function at a finer resolution than is directly visible from functional magnetic resonance imaging.  This work is clearly at the beginning stages, but the possibilities are enormous.  I've excerpted the more sensational parts of the article, so click on the full link above before it expires:

By peering not into the eyes but into the brain, an improved scanning technique has enabled scientists to figure out what people are looking at - even, in some cases, when they are not aware of what they have seen.

The advance, reported today, shows that the scanners may be better able than previously supposed to probe the border between conscious and unconscious thought and even, in certain circumstances, to read people's state of mind.

The scanning technique, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, is a more powerful version of a technique widely used in hospitals. It can show which regions of the brain are actively performing some task, but until now has lacked the resolution to track specific groups of neurons, as the functional units of the brain are called.

. . .

The achievement of Dr. Tong's statistical technique is that it allows the scanners in effect to infer what is happening just below their level of resolution. "The real breakthrough is getting down to the resolution of the column," Dr. Boynton said, adding that it may eventually be possible to apply the technique to the whole brain to analyze patterns of thought.