Our happy hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.

Scientists have built a device which can glean simple preferences by shining an infrared light into the brain.

To test "the first system that decodes spontaneous thoughts," researchers at the University of Toronto had volunteers rank eight soft drinks on a scale of one to five. They were then asked to silently decide which they liked most, prompted by seeing different pairs of sodas on a monitor.

By measuring the intensity of light the pre-frontal cortex absorbed during this decision process, the headband-like machine was able to accurately predict which soft drink the volunteer preferred 80 percent of the time.

The purpose of this research is to aid severely disabled children who aren't able to articulate their preferences. Soon, they too will know the joy of participating in a Pepsi challenge.

Click here to have Happy Hour Hero delivered to your desktop every pour time.

The new Happy Hour Hero widget brings amazing facts and figures to your desktop, MySpace page, Facebook profile or blog:



loading...