Stanford researchers have built a brain-computer interface, or BCI, that can decode your thoughts, but only after you mentally whisper a secret password to it. One test subject chose “Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang”, assuming there’s no way brain hackers will remember a long-forgotten Disney movie starring Dick Van Dyke.Published in Cell, the study details how microelectrodes planted in the motor cortex of four participants allowed researchers to tap into inner speech with surprising accuracy. Up to 74 percent in decoding thoughts in real time, pulling from a massive 125,000-word vocabulary.This BCI tech isn’t for reading your inner monologue. It’s being developed for people with severe speech impairments, like those who can’t speak due to paralysis or neuromuscular conditions. This New Mind-Reading Tech Unlocks Devices When You Think Your PasswordThe implant listens in on “inner speech,” the mental voice you use when talking to yourself (or calling your boss a dick). Turns out, thinking words produces faint neural signals similar to the ones used when actually speaking them.To keep this mind-reading from turning into an Orwellian nightmare, they added a password activation feature. The system only turns on when the user mentally says their chosen phrase. Pretty cool, if it’s so sci-fi that is a little incomprehensible that it could even be real. The best part is that the password system is incredibly secure. It had a 98 percent success rate in detecting correct passwords and filtering out impostors.To test how well the system could provide real-time readings of a participant’s inner monologue, the researchers had the participants think of numbers while counting a series of pink triangles displayed on a screen. It was a success. The system was capturing spontaneous inner monologue. If you’ve ever had a brilliant thought that poofed out of existence the moment you were distracted by something, this system could have preserved it for you.The researchers are already exploring new brain regions to enhance flexibility and help more people with various speech impairments. Mind-reading tech is real; a frightening thought on its own. Hopefully, it’s as secure as the researchers claim it is. If it works, it could one day give voice to those who are voiceless. All they’ll need is a magic word to unlock it.The post New Thought-Decoding Tech Lets You Unlock Devices With Your Brain appeared first on VICE.