4 ms·

fMRI is extremely coarse-grained, it also only measures blood flow. There's no way you can reconstruct what a person is thinking from just that, except at a rea

fMRI is extremely coarse-grained, it also only measures blood flow. There's no way you can reconstruct what a person is thinking from just that, except at a really basic level. If we want better brain-to-machine interfaces we'll need to work on better non-invasive (or at least invasive but low-risk) brain imaging

blurbleblurble 4y ago
I have a feeling this is going to involve NIR-II with fluorescent particles. To be clear, I'm not advocating for this, the thought of it freaks me out. Just because something isn't physically invasive, doesn't mean it isn't invasive in other ways!
- flangola7 4y ago
  It freaks you out? Isn't NIR dye pretty safe to use?
  - morkalork 4y ago
    Me thinks it's the thought that it could work that is freaky, not the mechanism itself. If you think governments demanding backdoors to encryption is bad now, what if that tech worked? All it would take is a kidnapping case like in "The Cell" for things to get very uncomfortable.
  - mrbungie 4y ago
    Reading thoughts is the ultimate invasion of privacy. Nothing weird about that freaking people out.
magicalhippo 4y ago
There's magnetoencephalography[1][2] which from what I could see offers a more direct route to measure brain activity. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography [2]: https://hebergement.universite-paris-saclay.fr/supraconductivite/v/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/magnetoencephalographie-nature-2018.pdf https://hebergement.universite-paris-saclay.fr/supraconducti...
- lostlogin 4y ago
  MEG has much better temporal resolution than MR, but it’s spatial resolution is only marginally better (according to the below source, figure 6). However it doesn’t help that MR has a vast array of acquisition methods and techniques. The below link is also interesting for its discussion of fMRI. https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/brain-metrics/what_does_fmri_measure/ https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/brain-metrics/what_does...

blurbleblurble 4y ago

I have a feeling this is going to involve NIR-II with fluorescent particles. To be clear, I'm not advocating for this, the thought of it freaks me out. Just because something isn't physically invasive, doesn't mean it isn't invasive in other ways!

flangola7 4y ago
It freaks you out? Isn't NIR dye pretty safe to use?
- morkalork 4y ago
  Me thinks it's the thought that it could work that is freaky, not the mechanism itself. If you think governments demanding backdoors to encryption is bad now, what if that tech worked? All it would take is a kidnapping case like in "The Cell" for things to get very uncomfortable.
- mrbungie 4y ago
  Reading thoughts is the ultimate invasion of privacy. Nothing weird about that freaking people out.

magicalhippo 4y ago

There's magnetoencephalography[1][2] which from what I could see offers a more direct route to measure brain activity. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography [2]: https://hebergement.universite-paris-saclay.fr/supraconductivite/v/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/magnetoencephalographie-nature-2018.pdf https://hebergement.universite-paris-saclay.fr/supraconducti...

lostlogin 4y ago
MEG has much better temporal resolution than MR, but it’s spatial resolution is only marginally better (according to the below source, figure 6). However it doesn’t help that MR has a vast array of acquisition methods and techniques. The below link is also interesting for its discussion of fMRI. https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/brain-metrics/what_does_fmri_measure/ https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/brain-metrics/what_does...