Deciphering Hidden Code Reveals Brain Activity

[TECH NEWS]

By combining sophisticated mathematical techniques more commonly used by spies instead of scientists with the power and versatility of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a Penn Medicine neurologist has developed a new approach for studying the inner workings of the brain. A hidden pattern is encoded in the seemingly random order of things presented to a human subject, which the brain reveals when observed with fMRI. The research is published in the journal NeuroImage. Geoffrey K. Aguirre, MD, Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, says “the same math that could break into your car can be used to crack the brain’s codes.” It’s called a de Bruijn sequence, which is a set or “alphabet” of things (letters, pictures, sounds) in a cyclic order such that every possible “word” or combination of things occurs only once. Previous experiments have presented information to study participants in more or less completely random order. This can be inefficient and inaccurate, making it difficult to discern important patterns and correlations between stimuli and neural responses. “We use the de Bruijn sequence to design the experiment,” Aguirre says.

3/28/2011, Penn Medicine