The mad hatters at MIT have done it again, this time with a device that can literally read your mind.

I’m gonna guess what you’re thinking – can you think something into action? According to Quartz, yes:

It works by analyzing “subvocalization,” or silent speech. Arnav Kapur, Shreyas Kapur, and Pattie Maes of MIT Media Lab hooked people up to a computer program that identified consistencies in how their brains and faces behaved while thinking certain words to themselves.

By carefully placing several electrodes on subjects’ faces, they were able to get the program to consistently distinguish these unspoken words.

Unspoken words. Imagine they could speak for themselves?

Anyway, the next step for the team at MIT was to generate a list of simple instructions (moving a cursor or doing non-complicated arithmetic) that can be translated to a computer without saying anything. Net mooi fokol.

The sophisticated tech then sends responses back to the subject by, for example, telling them the time with vibrations that moves through the bones on their money maker – eliminating the need for headphones.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any creepier, they called it “AlterEgo”.

Check it out:

I know, you’ve got questions. We all do. Get out of my mind, you heathens.

You can read more about AlterEgo here.

[source:quartz]