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Scientists extract images directly from brain (2008)
- TrevorJ 17y agoI can see this being amazingly handy in the (far) future in terms of interface navigation and search. Just picture the icon of the program you want to launch, or the stock photo you are trying to find and boom.
- profquail 17y agoThat's already available, to some degree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotiv_Systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotiv_Systems (There are others as well, but I understand this is one of the best commercial products as of now).
- TrevorJ 17y agoAh, yes I am familiar with this. I've used a similar device during some biofeedback treatment. The leap with the imaging tech is that it is a 1:1 correlation. As far as I am aware the other tech still relies on mapping cues from the brain that aren't directly 1:1 For example, boosting your high beta waves moves your game character forwards, etc. With the imaging technology, you don't have to perform mental gymnastics, you just "picture" the image you are after and the like.
- profquail 17y agoI think if I could see any invention in my lifetime, I'd want to see that knowledge-uploader thing from 'The Matrix'. Imagine how much you could learn! Especially before you were too old to use it...
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- dinkumthinkum 17y agoThis should be like front page news. This is something many would have not thought possible. It also poses many problems non-materialists that do not subscribe to a weird hand-wavy coincidentalism.
- philwelch 17y agoI don't see how this should pose problems to non-materialists. There's no reason the image can't be formed in the brain before or during transmission to the immaterial mind, for instance. I'm not a dualist by any stretch but to claim this as evidence for materialism is mistaken.
- dinkumthinkum 17y agoNo, you may not understand materialism. Sure, as I already said, if you subscribe to some weird coincidentalist view maybe not but for those not grasping at straws this removes a lot from a dualist conception and it even further shows it as an unneccessary hypothesis.
- philwelch 17y agoNot at all: proving that the brain forms images from sensory inputs only proves that the brain forms images from sensory inputs. It's a tenable dualist position that the material brain handles sense perception while the immaterial mind handles higher level consciousness and thought. In fact, the body was always classically assumed to handle most of sense perception even before this research. I understand materialism just fine. But this doesn't prove materialism.
- mixmax 17y agoSeems like it's a neural network trying to decipher the inner workings of another neural network. How amazingly cool is that ?
- dan_the_welder 17y agoRecursively cool.
- mquander 17y agoNot to impugn the author's trustworthiness, but this is so astounding to me that I find it somewhat incredible. Does anyone have an English-language news source for this? The "extracted" pictures are an order of magnitude clearer than I would have thought possible.
- sho 17y agoYour skepticism is commendable, but the pictures are real. Here's the paper: http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273%2808%2900958-6 http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273%2808%2900958-...
- mquander 17y agoThat's fantastic, and the full text is available there too. Thanks.
- TrevorJ 17y agoI believe it, if only because I've read of them doing this with cats several years ago.
- Salvatore 17y agoOn one hand, this is great. It will lead to new technology which will inevitably lead to better video games. On the other hand, this provides the opportunity for total loss of privacy. Forget freedom of speech, people might start to attack the freedom to think certain thoughts. In other news, China and Iran are thrilled at this new science.
- maxwell 17y agoThen we'll have to encrypt our thoughts.
- Asmodeus 17y agoOur thoughts aren't standardized, so you get encryption for free.
- randallsquared 17y agoThat's not at all clear.
- sho 17y ago"In other news, China and Iran are thrilled at this new science." Why? Are they having problems with people imagining politically undesirable images? I would think the West, with its insane war to protect the cartoon children, would have more use for such technology.
- joe_the_user 17y agoI wouldn't claim the West lacks political repression but it seems obvious that any repressive states would love have such technology. Your argument seems to discount this.
- dejb 17y agoIn the long term technology like this will end privacy for those who want to participate in the modern economy. But you shouldn't assume it will happen in a 'top down' way that will benefit totalitarian governments. Totalitarian governments require secrecy to do their evil deeds. Look at the spread of mobile cameras (mostly in phones). These have allowed many an injustice to be exposed. The police no longer feel like they have immunity to do whatever they want. Consider the benefits of being able to scan the brains of those accused of crimes against humanity. If people understood that in the long term there are no secrets they would hesitate to do evil deeds.
- bjelkeman-again 17y agoThe source for this article is a 404 page. (Translated via Google) http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chunichi.co.jp%2Farticle%2Fnational%2Fnews%2FCK2008121102000053.html&sl=ja&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chu...
- a-priori 17y agoWhat they're doing is a high-resolution fMRI scan of V1 (primary visual cortex), a region of the brain that shows a "retinotopic map" of the visual field. It's been known for a while that it's possible to reconstruct an image from V1 activation. What this research shows is that fMRI imaging is now detailed enough to do this non-invasively. Also, something cool about this research, and also a bit scary, is that it's also known that this region is activated by visual recall (a quick search revealed this: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=48072 http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=48...). I'm not sure if anyone has ever tried to reproduce an image from V1 activation during visual recall, so I don't know if it would be a coherent image. My guess is it would though, in which case an fMRI scan could detect an image of an "N" if you asked the person to picture the letter. Pretty cool.
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- brlewis 17y agoI really think if a coherent image had been made from visual recall, that news would travel fast.
- ryanwaggoner 17y agoMy big question would be whether the patterns that they're detecting in the brain are similar for different people? For example, if I imagine an apple, do my "brain patterns" resemble someone else's when they also think of an apple? If not, seems like training this device would be a pain in the ass, because you'd have to do it for each person. But if so...imagine a huge resource of patterns for different thoughts, feelings, mental pictures, etc. Hopefully this comment makes sense...
- joeyo 17y agoIn general the patterns are the same and the brain areas involved are the same but there is definitely individual variability, too. There is probably much less individual variability in visual cortex than, say, language representation areas (consider English speakers vs Spanish speakers) but there is likely enough that they have to retrain their algorithms for each individual to achieve optimum discrimination.
- Asmodeus 17y agoThere is indeed enough variation. I unfortunately can't find the link, but they went further and had people imagine something like the letter 'n,' and of the whopping eight people they tested, one came out completely garbled, even after training. Also, I suspect that variation increases with abstractness, so it will almost certainly be impossible to extract high level thought without extensive cooperation. For example, the brain state that the word 'conciousness' invokes in me is going to be entirely different from you because I have different associations, examples, knowledge, and general representation. Now try to extract an entire sentence without training first. Have fun!
- bd 17y agoThere were interesting comments about this when it was posted here before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=394826 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=394826
- Arun2009 17y agoQuestions: - Will the fMRI patterns for the same image be the same for two different people? - When I think of images, the vision I have in my mind are not as vivid as when I see them directly. Given this, will the fMRI patterns be the same in both cases?
- onreact-com 17y agoHooray! So now I can download the porn images I saw elsewhere back to my laptop directly from my brain! This way you get all the porn mags for free!