Culver Decodes Brain Signal Activity With Light

Joseph P. Culver, PhD, the Sherwood Moore Professor of Radiology for Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has used light to detect what is going on inside someone’s head, particularly those who are unable to communicate due to brain injury or disease. 

His study, available online in the journal NeuroImage, features an LED light being beamed from the outside of the head inward to detect activity in the area of the brain responsible for visual processing, and then decodes brain signals to determine what the person sees, demonstrating that high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT) — a noninvasive, wearable, light-based brain imaging technology — is sensitive and precise enough to be potentially useful in applications such as augmented communication that are not well suited to other imaging methods. 

Read more on the School of Medicine’s website.