Scientists are moving closer to developing mind reading technology after researchers at the Wadsworth Center in New York were able to record the brain waves directly associated with speech during a recent study.

The researchers used electrocorticography to map out which areas of the brain lit up when certain words were spoken with the aid of electrodes located on the surface of the cortex. Seven epileptic patients who were undergoing clinical treatments participated in the study.

"It has now been shown for the first time that is possible to reconstruct basic units, words, and complete sentences of continuous speech from these brain waves and to generate the corresponding text," according to a report on the study.

Tanja Schultz, one of the researchers involved in the study, says that the results are a major step in the direction of humans being able to communicate with machines via brain activity alone.