A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person’s brain and read their intentions before they act.

The team used high-resolution computed tomography (CT) brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. They revealed signatures of activity in the medial prefrontal cortex that changed when a person intended to add numbers or subtract them.

It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way, according to the researchers at Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, University College London and Oxford University.