Covert consciousness, where unresponsive patients willfully modulate brain activity to command, is gaining attention. But these assessments are fundamentally limited. What if we could just... read their minds instead? 🧵 about our paper in @greenjournal.bsky.social www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/... - ThreadSky

dbfisch.bsky.social • 9 days ago

Covert consciousness, where unresponsive patients willfully modulate brain activity to command, is gaining attention. But these assessments are fundamentally limited. What if we could just... read their minds instead? 🧵 about our paper in
@greenjournal.bsky.social
https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000210208?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed

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dbfisch.bsky.social•9 days ago

Many fMRI paradigms work like this: During a scan, we present alternating periods of commands (e.g., "move your hand") and rest. If there is activity in motor regions during commands (relative to rest), we conclude covert consciousness. But should we? Does slight overlap count?

dbfisch.bsky.social•9 days ago

Conversely, what if there is distortion of the brain due to a lesion, and activity occurs outside of typical motor regions? Should we not count this (and risk overlooking consciousness patients)?

dbfisch.bsky.social•9 days ago

Thus, current fMRI covert consciousness paradigms may be neither sensitive nor specific. EEG-based paradigms solve some problems, but create others. We therefore may be making errors in who we consider conscious. Enter "neural decoding".

dbfisch.bsky.social•9 days ago

Neural decoding works like this: You train an algorithm to associate stimuli with patterns of brain activity, then use it to "decode" a person's experience from their brain activity. The stimulus can even be a semantic concept, so you can decode not only sensation, but *meaning*.

dbfisch.bsky.social•9 days ago

Take this brilliant study by @alexanderhuth.bsky.social and colleagues. Healthy subjects listened to narratives during an fMRI scan, then individualized algorithms decoded novel narratives with surprising accuracy.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01304-9

dbfisch.bsky.social•9 days ago

The narratives didn't need to be auditory. The algorithms could even decode narratives from muted movies. This is as close to mind-reading as we've ever come.

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