Memories get recorded in regular patterns, and that could make it possible to read a person's memories in their brain activity, researchers said in a new report.

Researchers from University College London put volunteers into an fMRI scanner, which can record blood flow in the brain as someone performs a task to determine which areas are at work. The volunteers navigated a virtual reality environment.

"Surprisingly, just by looking at the brain data we could predict exactly where they were in the virtual reality environment. In other words, we could read their spatial memories," said Eleanor Maguire, one of the leaders of the study.

She said she believes that the research opens up a range of possibilities of seeing how actual memories are encoded across neurons, and could be used to see longer-term memories or thoughts about the future.

"Understanding how we as humans record our memories is critical to helping us learn how information is processed in the hippocampus and how our memories are eroded by diseases such as Alzheimer's," said Demis Hassabis, another researcher.

The study was published today in the journal Current Biology.