Following research that neurons in the human brain respond in an abstract manner to particular individuals or objects, University of Leicester researchers have discovered that from the firing of this type of neuron, they can tell what a person is actually seeing.

They recorded simultaneously from up to 100 neurons in the human brain and applied a decoding algorithms to infer the stimulus from the neuronal firing.

Potential applications of this discovery include the development of neural prosthetic devices to be used by paralysed patients or amputees.