Scientists Read the Bird's Brain and Know What It Is About to Sing

Researchers at the University of California have created a brain reading system that tells us what zebra finch species will sing before they start singing. Although only a fraction of a second is read, this success is the perfect stepping stone to apply brain reading technology to the human brain.

Key Facts About Bird

People choose this bird to study because their brain is tiny, but their songs are as complicated as the way people use language to talk. Like human language, birds learn songs through development. With fragile species, they learn songs from adult birds.

Scientists used silicon electrodes attached to birds to measure currents that flow through its neurons. They focused on the brain region "giving orders to create the necessary song".

Why Bird Matters

A neural-network neural network software, a kind of machine learnin, to support the study. They put the information obtained from the bird's brain and the resulting song into the machine so that the software can learn gradually, predict what the bird is about to do.

As a result, the researchers deciphered a bird song directly from their brain activity. Although the anticipated tone time is very short, 30 milliseconds.

This success is a solid stepping stone for researchers to develop a tool to read the human brain in the future.

Investors in Silicon Valley, Elon Musk, Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg have all made statements about developing technology to read human brains.