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Letter: Reading minds

Published 31 May 2006

From John Allman

In the article on using fMRI to determine a person’s thoughts, Douglas Fox wrote: “Until recently, mind reading was the preserve of quacks” (6 May, p 32). Not so! Over 30 years ago, long before fMRI was developed, Lawrence Pinneo of the Stanford Research Institute claimed that he could recognise words that volunteers were thinking of by using EEG and EMG data.

Fleet, Hampshire, UK

Issue no. 2554 published 3 June 2006

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