Man who says he can 'read minds' over Facebook goes viral with 13 million views

Think of a number. Any number

The video has been viewed more than 13 million times (YouTube)

You may have seen this man pop up in your Facebook feed claiming he can read your mind.

Well, he can't (fairly obviously) but he seems to have tricked a fair few people into thinking he can.

Lasse Burholt (who also goes by the name Lasse Balama) starts the video telling people he is going to correctly predict their answer to a quesiton - and asks them to share the video if he is proved correct.

He then holds up a series of notes with basic sums on them for the viewer to work out before asking them to think of a number between five and 12.

The video has been viewed more than 13 million times (YouTube)

He asks the camera with a note "Got it?", before guessing the answer is seven.

The video has since been viewed more than 13 million times but it "only" has 214,000 shares, which is a 1 in 13 success rate by his own standards.

The science behind reading others' minds has long held intrigue.

In 2008, scientists suggested there were closer to being able to read someone's mind and even visualise their dreams by analysing their brain activity with a medical scanner.

A computer that could "decode" the brain was able to predict with a 90 per cent accuracy which photos an individual had previously looked at judging by their brain activity.

In 2010, a man who had apparently been in a vegetative state for five years after suffering a traumatic head injury - and who had been dubbed a "living dead" - was able to communicate with doctors by thought alone.

Using an advanced brain scanner, the unidentified man was able to reply "yes" or "no" to researchers - making contact with the outside world for the first time.

And in December last year, neuroscientists figured out how to "read" a fly's mind - whereby they essentially were able to detect conversations between the insect's neurons.

The Independent has reached out to Mr Burholt to find out what, if anything, he hopes to demonstrate with his experiment.