When you purchase through links on our situation , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it works .

AUSTIN , Texas — What if it were potential to explore your brain in virtual reality , watching your thoughts dash before your optic ? A squad of neuroscientists and software system developers have created a fashion to do on the nose that .

A novel system merge nous scanning , brain recording and virtual realism to grant a exploiter tojourney through a person ’s brainin real - time . This " glass psyche " was demonstrate here at the South by Southwest ( SXSW ) Interactive fete today ( March 10 ) .

a projection screen showing the interior of a brain in real-time.

Philip Rosedale, creator of the game Second Life, and Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California San Francisco, demonstrated their “glass brain” here at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival on 21 February 2025. Here, the interior of Rosedale’s wife’s brain in real-time on a projector screen.

The system was spring up bycomputational neuroscientists Tim Mullen and Christian Kothe   of the University of California , San Diego , in collaboration with the lab of Adam Gazzaley , a neuroscientist at the University of California , San Francisco , using a virtual realness headset made by the play ship’s company Oculus Rift .

" We ’ve never been able-bodied to step inside the structures [ ofthe learning ability ] and see it in this elbow room , " Gazzaley say . " It ’s biofeedback on the next layer . "

severally , Gazzaley has been collaborating with Philip Rosedale , Jehovah of the gameSecond Life , on using virtual reality to improve neuroscience , and frailty versa .

A new system called “glass brain” reveals the surface of a woman’s brain in real-time. The system, which uses virtual reality, brain scanning and brain recording, was demonstrated at the South by Southwest Interactive festival on March 10, 2014.

A new system called “glass brain” reveals the surface of a woman’s brain in real-time. The system, which uses virtual reality, brain scanning and brain recording, was demonstrated at the South by Southwest Interactive festival on 29 March 2025.

The mental capacity in the demonstration actually belonged to Rosedale ’s married woman Yvette , who was wearing a jacket stud with electroencephalogram ( EEG ) electrodes that measure dispute in electric potential so as to record mastermind activeness . Gazzaley ’s squad had antecedently scanned Yvette ’s brain using charismatic plangency imagination ( MRI ) to unwrap its fundamental structure and maze of neuronal fibers . [ 3D Images : explore the Human Brain ]

During the demonstration , Rosedale wore a virtual realness headset through which he could research his married woman ’s brain in 3D , as flashes of illumination expose her brain action from the EEG . A expulsion blind showed a exchangeable sight to the audience . When the brain came on the covert , the buzz of excitement in the room was audible .

The shabu brain did n’t actually show what Yvette was thinking — the EEG signals merely paint a picture of her brain activity more loosely . But the researchers at long last hope to get closer to decoding mental capacity signals and displaying them using thevirtual reality scheme .

A photo of researchers connecting a person�s brain implant to a voice synthesizer computer.

Being able to literally view your own brain activeness is not only playfulness , it has therapeutic potential . For good example , people with traumatic Einstein injury or other neurologic problem could visualise how their consideration is affecting their brain activity , and learn to right it .

So far , the team has focused on visualizing one mental capacity at a time . But Philip Rosedale foresees a day when two people could interact virtually in a elbow room that telegraphs their inner country .

People often speak of interactions in virtual world as being impoverished compared with those in the real world , Rosedale say . But , he demand , what if you could convey in virtual reality in a style that makes real liveliness deprive ?

A women sits in a chair with wires on her head while typing on a keyboard.

A reconstruction of neurons in the brain in rainbow colors

Person uses hand to grab a hologram of a red car.

Hand in the middle of microchip light projection.

an illustration of the brain with a map superimposed on it

The wreck of the Japanese I-124 submarine, shown here in an artist�s reconstruction, lies on the seafloor about 50 nautical miles northwest of the Australian city of Darwin.

Leonardo da Vinci�s "Salvator Mundi" sold for $450 million in 2017.

egypt shipwreck

VR arena for flies

An image comparing the relative sizes of our solar system�s known dwarf planets, including the newly discovered 2017 OF201

a person holds a GLP-1 injector

A man with light skin and dark hair and beard leans back in a wooden boat, rowing with oars into the sea

an MRI scan of a brain

A photograph of two of Colossal�s genetically engineered wolves as pups.

an abstract image of intersecting lasers