Thought reading is remote electronic reading of a person's thoughts, and is actually the remote reading of "sub-vocalized" thoughts, i.e, when "talking to yourself", and often, when you read a book.

The brain's magnetic activity can be scanned with high precision with MRI and similar medical scanners.

The process used is the same as in both state-of-the-art lie detectors and speech recognition computers. Test subjects are put through carefully controlled experiences, or by having a subject say given words repeatedly.

An appropriate scanning device generates a database of the body's responses, including magnetic activity, at each repetition of words. Eventually, a point is reached where consistent features of neural activity patterns can be distilled from the raw data for each word. In effect, the attached computer compiles a "dictionary" of neural activity patterns versus words.

Once a dictionary containing pattern features common to most test subjects is created, from that point on, what is literally read are any "sub-vocalized" words, the subject's conscious thoughts.

Thought reading, then, in the UNclassified world, is an enhanced form of familiar speech recognition technology. Some high-end computer games perform primitive "thought reading" in that they can be controlled with a helmet on the player's head, where the player can execute a few commands just by thinking about them.