Have you ever made a mistake while performing a monotonous task, one that requires your concentration but seems to go on and on and on? Some mistakes might be harmless, such as dropping a sock on the way to the laundry. Other mistakes could be more serious. Driving a long distance requires your constant vigilance and attention, but make one mistake and it could be deadly.

What if there was a way to predict our making a mistake in such a task, before the mistake was made? In our driving example, such a method would perhaps result in lives saved.

When people blunder after performing the same task over and over, scientists had suspected that such lapses were due to momentary hiccups in concentration. Still, little was known about what the brain was actually doing before such errors.

To investigate further, the brains of volunteers were scanned as they performed a monotonous task – repetitively pushing buttons that matched images flashed at them.

Unexpectedly, before volunteers made errors, their brains started displaying abnormal behavior … up to a half-minute beforehand.

Excellent! Except for one little problem. Functional MRI scanners don’t exactly fit in anyone’s pocket:

The problem is the researchers scanned the brains of volunteers using functional MRI. This conventionally has patients lying down in a large tube while slowly getting probed with powerful magnetic fields and radio wave pulses — not exactly ideal helping people in everyday situations.

The article suggests that a future technology may be developed to help with this issue, or perhaps the brain signals could pick be picked up by scalp-placed electrodes or another technology, such as functional optical brain imaging (also known as functional near-infrared spectroscopy).

Regardless, this kind of research shows that if certain behaviors can be predicted, even by just a few seconds, it could have an impact in reducing possible harm caused by such behaviors.

Read the full article: Mind-Reading Hat Could Prevent Brain Farts

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 22 Apr 2008
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.