🧠 Can Our Brain and ChatGPT Understand Each Other?

We are used to calling AI a "black box," but we don't know much about our own brain either. What if ChatGPT could communicate directly with the brain and figure out how everything is arranged in our heads? Science journalist Ilya Kolmanovsky participated in an interesting experiment, which he discussed in his podcast.

🔋 How the Brain Reacts to Words

Neuroscientists from MIT conducted a study. Using an MRI scanner, they scanned the brains of volunteers while they read various phrases. It turned out that the brain reacts hyperactively to some phrases and weakly to others. They also managed to identify areas of the brain responsible for speech —the speech centers.

🔍 How ChatGPT Understood What Happens Inside the Brain

The scientists uploaded brain scans and the read phrases into the ChatGPT model. Then they asked the LLM to compile a list of phrases that, in its opinion, would elicit a certain reaction from the brain. ChatGPT created two sets of 240 phrases each: one for strong reactions and one for weak reactions.

😏 How to Manipulate the Brain

Kolmanovsky was placed in an MRI scanner and given phrases from the sets created by ChatGPT to read. After analyzing the reactions, the neuroscientists confirmed that the phrases from the "active" set indeed stimulated the brain, while the weak ones barely caused any reaction.

In other words, based on a dataset (brain scans and words), ChatGPT was able to understand how the brain "thinks" and, using synthesized data, control its reactions.

🤫 Where Could This Be Useful?

→ ChatGPT and the human brain are similarly structured in terms of creating sentences. They can understand each other without direct human involvement.

→ Such a "brain—AI" interface could help people who have suffered a stroke train their speech centers using special sets of words.

🎧 You can listen to this podcast episode here (use subtitles in English).

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