Hairbrush Reads Your Mind

梳子能读懂你的心

No, this brush is not a mind-reader in the psychic¹ sense. What it does is take precise measurements of the levels of neurological activity in a brain.

梳子能读懂你的心，这可不是从什么神秘莫测的读心术。这把神奇的数字能够精确地测量你大脑内部神经活动的水平。

Technology already exists to track your mental activity. It’s called functional² near infrared³ spectroscopy (fNIRS), which images blood flowing through the brain and measures the difference of levels of oxygen in the blood in order to evaluate mental activity.

最早的追踪大脑活动的技术称之为功能性近红外光谱方法，这种方法可以对你大脑里的血液流动成像，并且记录大脑学血液里面的氧气含量以评估你的精神状态。

But it has a major drawback: it’s usually impaired⁴ by hair.

但是这种方法有一个致命的弱点，它会伤害到你的头发。

That’s why researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas and University of Texas at Arlington have been working on a device that is essentially⁵ a hairbrush that can measure and monitor brain activity.

这就是为什么德克萨斯大学位于达拉斯和阿灵顿的分校要联合致力于发明这种能够测量和检测大脑活动的梳子的缘由。

The device is officially known as a “brush optrode,” which uses that same fNIRS technology, but in a way no other device has been able to up to this point. It’s designed to provide increased sensitivity with fiber⁶ tips that thread through hair to increase direct scalp contact. The technique is much more accurate when its sensors⁷ can actually touch the scalp.

这种梳子的学名称之为“梳子光极”，它的原理和近红外光谱法差不多，但是却超越了之前所有的设备。这种设备的敏感度很高，它的光纤触头能够在头发之间穿过，直接接触到头皮，因此这种传感器的测量结果要比其他传感器精确很多。

Duncan MacFarlane is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas, and one of the lead researchers on this project. He says, “It is easy for a patient’s hair to get in the way and block the signal” with conventional fNIRS technology. “So we developed a new tip for the fNIRS fibers⁸-a brush optrode that slides the fibers between the hair follicles. Signal levels increase three- to five-fold, and patients report that the brush optrode is considerably⁹ more comfortable than the conventional fiber ends.”

杜康·麦克法兰是德克萨斯大学达拉斯分校电子工程学院的一名教授，也是这个项目的带头人。他说，“用传统的近红外光谱分析法，头发很容易就纠缠在一起，影响到信号的传递。因此我们发明了一种新的光纤，一种近似梳子的光极，它使得光纤可以在头皮的小囊之间自由地穿梭。信号的传递程度增加了三到五倍，治疗者也反映这种梳子的光极要比传统的设备舒服很多。”