Mental Health

Fascinating, and a little scary? "Ripping a page from the world of sci-fi, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to take a high-tech peek into the blood flow and neural signaling patterns of an individual's brain. In turn, they have created a computer program that carefully "reads" and decodes these patterns, then reconstructs them back into images that approximate what the individual had just seen... In the end, the computer was able to successfully sift through all the digested information, mining for the 100 specific visual clips that it deemed most similar to the imagery the team members had seen. The result: a blurry but accurate and flowing reconstruction of the movie trailers the team volunteers had viewed."

Largest study to date spots more than 50 possible culprits in autoimmune disease.