Functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, is one of the most advanced tools for understanding how we think. The researchers “just took that model, and then they said, ‘Okay, can we now link it up in a smart way to the brain scans?’”The brain scans used in the new study come from a research database containing the results of an earlier study in which eight participants agreed to regularly lay in an fMRI scanner and view 10,000 images over the course of a year. The technology’s current limitations are “not a good enough excuse to take potential harms of decoding lightly,” she says