One of my favorite shows on TV is the Mentalist.  He's a crime solver who use skills developed by performing magic and mentalism as though it were real...in short, he was a con-man.

While not a con-man myself

I have enjoyed performing magic and mentalism for more than 40 years and while I appreciate card tricks the most, audiences prefer the mind reading stuff.  There is just something so cool and yet kinda creepy about the thought of really being inside somebody’s head. 

And now…in a way, it seems like mind reading may actually be possible!  From the world of science--Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jefferson University inserted tiny electrodes into the brains of epilepsy patients awaiting brain surgery and then asked them to memorize a series of fifteen words. The researchers were not only able to see changes in brain activity, but could also see how each subject grouped words together like “goose” and “duck.”

They say that by watching how different areas of a subject’s brain reacted while they committed certain words to memory, they could determine in advance which words the subject would then say – even though the subjects were not speaking or making gestures.

Ok, its not an act you can take out on the road but it is interesting!

Researchers at the Department of Psychology of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences, describes the brain image as a “neural fingerprint” that can be used to analyze the way that a brain makes associations.    Move over Professor X…your mutant skills may soon be duplicated by science!

[Medical Daily]