UO researcher's mind-reading study draws media coverage

Recently published research by the UO's Brice Kuhl, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, recently caught the attention of the UK's Daily Mail and Vox. Kuhl has used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to dive into the world of mind reading.

Experiments in the research were completed at New York University, shortly before Kuhl accepted a faculty position at the UO in August 2015. Study co-author, Hongmi Lee, still a doctoral student at NYU, followed Kuhl to the UO as a visiting graduate student to continue their analysis of the research and to keep Kuhl as her academic adviser.

In essence, Kuhl and Lee used machine learning to predict facial recognition as gathered from fMRI activity patterns. The findings are detailed in a paper, "Reconstructing Perceived and Retrieved Faces from Activity Patterns in Lateral Parietal Cortex," in the Journal of Neuroscience.

The two are launching a new study, using the UO's MRI center, to probe further into facial reconstruction based on memory.

Read the stories by Vox.com and the Daily Mail.