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Decoding Motor Intentions From Human Brain Activity, Jason P. Gallivan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

“You read my mind.” Although this simple everyday expression implies ‘knowledge or understanding’ of another’s thinking, true ‘mind-reading’ capabilities implicitly seem constrained to the domains of Hollywood and science-fiction. In the field of sensorimotor neuroscience, however, significant progress in this area has come from mapping characteristic changes in brain activity that occur prior to an action being initiated. For instance, invasive neural recordings in non-human primates have significantly increased our understanding of how highly cognitive and abstract processes like intentions and decisions are represented in the brain by showing that it is possible to decode or ‘predict’ upcoming sensorimotor …