Health & Science

A machine that reads minds

By decoding signals to a key part of the brain, researchers have come as close as anyone ever has to reading a person’s mind. Using a sophisticated type of magnetic resonance imaging that detects minute blood flows within the brain, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley were able to highlight which parts of test subjects’ brains’ visual cortexes were triggered when they looked at various images. Once those brain patterns were associated with specific objects, such as a horse or bicycle, scientists were able to accurately determine what the subjects were looking at based solely on their brain activity. “Our research makes substantial advances toward being able to decode mental content,” study author Kay Kendrick tells New Scientist. Scientists say the technology has great potential for diagnosing brain areas damaged by strokes, testing the effectiveness of psychotropic drugs, and even helping paraplegics one day operate machines with only their thoughts. There’s also a darker side, researchers acknowledge. “No one,” researchers said, “should be subjected to any form of brain-reading process involuntarily, covertly, or without complete informed consent.”

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The hard-fought Democratic and Republican primaries this year have drawn a high level of public interest, and there may be neurological implications, scientists say. “As we listen to the candidates and think about what is being said,” neuropharmacologist John Roache tells LiveScience, “the brain processes the information, which grows neural connections.” In addition, the more personally engaged people are in the process, Roache says, the more their brains are stimulated. So the fact that so many people have been volunteering, attending political rallies, and even arguing about the candidates this year suggests widespread brain-cell growth. “If we become emotionally engaged, the greater levels of emotion or commitment further enhance the brain processes,” Roache says, “and connect them all the more with the emotion and physical activity involved.” Roache notes that the “brain effect” of politics is completely nonpartisan.

The price of relief

People are more likely to feel relief from pain when they’ve paid higher prices for their medicines, a new study says. Researchers gave 82 test subjects a placebo that they were told was a powerful pain medication; half of subjects were told the medicine cost $2.50 a dose while half thought it went for 10 cents a pill. When later asked to rate the intensity of their pain, 85 percent of those who received the supposedly high-priced pill reported feeling better, compared with 61 percent of those who got the other pill. “We all know that we expect more from products with high prices and good names, and we wanted to see if these things could change how we react to pain medication,” Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely tells the Los Angeles Times. “The answer seems to be yes.” Ariely said the findings may help explain why many people say that generic drugs are less effective than their name-brand equivalents.

Snowflakes or germflakes?

Most of those pretty snowflakes that drift out of the sky have an unpleasant surprise inside—bacteria. Scientists have long known that for moisture high in the atmosphere to become snow it needs to cling to something in order to condense and fall. Now, a Louisiana State University study of snow samples from around the world has determined that up to 85 percent of the flakes crystallized around clumps of living bacteria that were floating in the air. Researchers were also surprised to discover that even snow collected from relatively pristine locales such as Montana and the Yukon contained large amounts of bacteria. The most common of the bacteria, Pseudomonas syringae, can cause disease in several types of plants, including tomatoes and beans. As for humans, researchers say kids can still try to catch snowflakes on their tongues. “We eat stuff that’s covered with bacteria all the time, and for the most part, it’s killed in the stomach,” pediatrician Dr. Joel Forman tells the Associated Press. “I’m not aware of any clinical reports of children be­coming ill from eating snow.”

A false sense of security

While carrying a cell phone makes many people feel safer, a new study suggests that it also makes them take more risks. In a survey of college students, 42 percent of the women and 28 percent of the men said they had walked someplace after dark they probably would not have gone without a cell phone. “Students seem to feel less vulnerable when they carry a cell phone, although there’s no evidence that they really are,” city planner and study author Jack Nasar tells LiveScience. “If anything, they are probably less safe because they are paying less attention to their surroundings.” Indeed, another survey lends support to the notion that cell phone users can be oblivious. Nearly 50 percent of cell phone users admitted to walking through busy intersections without paying much attention, compared to 25 percent of those without phones.