Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking 248
neurospace writes "Caltech scientists have successfully decoded movement plans from the brains of awake humans. This work has direct application to the development of a neural prosthesis, a brain-machine interface that will give paralyzed people the ability to move and communicate simply using their thoughts. The lead scientist on this project will be interviewed on Sunday, March 20, on the SETI Institute's weekly radio show, 'Are We Alone?'"
Possible other uses (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Possible other uses (Score:3, Interesting)
This technology may be used to further the success rate.. but prosecution will always hold the risk of damning an innocent.
Re:Possible other uses (Score:2)
You sir, are a moron!
Re:Possible other uses (Score:2)
I'm not going to argue one way or another on what the standard should be, but the fact of the matter is that we just have to do our best to prevent innocent people from being punished, while accepting the fact that it will sometimes happen.
Re:Possible other uses (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Possible other uses (Score:2)
Unless, of course, the paralyzed person is on Talos IV.
Re:Possible other uses (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Possible other uses (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk about a literal interpretation of "thoughtcrime"! I shudder to think of the outcomes if our very thoughts could be used against us. How many slashdotters have thought some nasty things about our current president?
Besides, it says "what you are thinking" and not "anything you ever said, did, or thought."
~Rebecca
Re:Possible other uses (Score:2, Interesting)
hell, half the time the psycho owner of the company i work at is so suspicious of her employees that we feel guilty even when we haven't done anything wrong, just because she acts like we did. then she thinks we are guilty because we are acting that way. catch-22.
Re:Possible other uses (Score:2, Interesting)
When was the last time a cop stopped you, gave you a bunch of flowers and told you you were a model citizen?
Isn't it their job to make sure people are being as nice as possible to each other?
Re:Possible other uses (Score:3, Interesting)
See, now you can't avoid thinking about it. Just replace "polar bears" with "the body I buried in the yard" and you can see how problematic that can be.
Re:Possible other uses (Score:2)
Functional magnetic resonance imaging--fMRI--opens a window onto the brain at work. By tracking changes in cerebral blood flow as a subject performs a mental task, fMRI shows which brain regions "light up" when making a movement, thinking of a loved one, or telling a lie. Its ability to reveal function, not merely structure, distinguishes
Re:Possible other uses (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you can make brain-joysticks by sensing brain activity in parts of the brain, but to interpret the miniscule complex traffic and put it all together to make sense of it, would require devices that are as intelligent and complex as the human brain itself. So I find it highly
Re:Possible other uses (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder if this new science will be used to prove the guily or innocent in crimes?
TFA is about signals in the brain regarding physical movement. What does this have to do with proving innocence or guilt with crimes? "Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking" was just the title. It's not a story about scientists being able to peer into people's memories or complex thoughts.
Re:Possible other uses (Score:2)
Well, you'd be surprised to find out that so called complex thoughts are just as much motor activations as normal muscle control. They both involve the part of the brain known as the Basal Ganglia, the seat of motor
Re:Possible other uses (Score:2)
Re:Possible other uses (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Possible other uses (Score:2)
But I wasn't aware of the show. One of the reasons to read
Language (Score:5, Interesting)
But I doubt this will happen in my lifetime.
Re:Language (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Language (Score:5, Insightful)
Words are the handles that we put on our reality. They are difficult to standardize often even within one language because of the variety of experiences that different speakers will have associated with each word.
In computer terms it's like this:
A Mac, a PC, and a Linux box are all using the same HTTP protocol to access websites. They have identical interactions with the exception of the User-Agent header. This is like people using words.
If we were to plug directly into a person's brain in order to attempt to translate the meanings behind words it would be like removing the abstraction layer of a standardized http protocol and looking at the innards of each computer system. As each computer handles internal communication in wildly differing manners it would be much harder to understand what these computers were trying to do than if we experienced them only through their web browser.
So a person using words is not unlike a wrapper or abstraction layer - it makes meaning MORE accessible, not less. Universal translators will be impossible until we have properly mapped all the different meanings in all the different brains.
For more info, I recommend The Language War by Robin Tolmach Lakoff
Re:Language (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Language (Score:2)
Re:Language (Score:2)
Babies aren't "speaking" their thoughts. Babies don't talk. What you hear is crude vocalizations, determined primarily by the physical shape of the equipment. There are no specific thoughts attached to those noises, any more than their spasmodic leg kicking and arm waving are "walking" and "reaching". There is no universal language of thought, and n
Re:Language (Score:2)
I have partial and incomplete model of the ways that people map their thoughts, and it already predicts 16 different ways based on the primary data structures used to represent meaning. (It also predicts that most programmers will fall into only 4 of those groups, and primarily into two of them.) The different modes of thought yield different strengths a
No more diplomacy (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt I would like to see it in my lifetime.
While language can be a barrier between people, it also allows for a suitable wording of your ideas, for diplomacy etc. If everyone could 'read' other's real ideas, people would not necessarily get along better...
Re:No more diplomacy (Score:2)
That's what the "politenessizingtude filter" is for.
User thinks, in Elbonian: "Microsoft sucks, man!"
Translator speaks, in English: "It is the opinion of this one that perhaps it is the case that Microsoft exceeds expectations in the domain of suckitude. You are a fine specimen of humanity
Re:Language (Score:2)
Re:Language (Score:2)
Esperanto (Background/Tutorials [lernu.net]) has been doing this for a while.
Transpiranto (Score:2)
Re:Transpiranto (Score:2)
Re:Language (Score:2)
Much better than what Babelfish manages now.
Re:Language (Score:2)
Re:Language (Score:2)
Re:Language (Score:2)
Re:Language (Score:3, Interesting)
But maybe that's because i'm in another country.
Re:Language (Score:2)
Re:Language (Score:2)
I can't even comprehend what it would be like to think in another language. Foreign language classes are the only classes I have ever truely and miserably flunked.
That explains it (Score:2)
No wonder I can't understand you. Since you think in pathological eccentric rubbish lists nobody can understand you, including yourself.
Personally I think in a C, but I'm not quite good enough to submit my thoughts to the IOCCC - yet. I'm starting to switch to python though. I can understand what I mean, but I'm not sure if I want to... We will see if this holds though, I've only been doing python for a couple weeks.
Should be interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Should be interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
There was actually Nature paper [nature.com] a few days ago about that very topic:
Musical imagery: Sound of silence activates auditory cortex
Auditory imagery occurs when one mentally rehearses telephone numbers or has a song 'on the brain' -- it is the subjective experience of hearing in the absence of auditory stimulation, and is useful for investigating aspects of human cognition1. Here we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify and characterize the neural substrates that support unprompted auditory imagery and find that auditory and visual imagery seem to obey similar basic neural principles.
Here's a popular press article [tampabay.com].
"We played music in the scanner (FMRI) and then we hit a virtual "mute' button," said David Kraemer, a graduate student in Dartmouth's Psychological and Brain Sciences Department and author of the study, published recently in the journal Nature.
With familiar songs, "we found that people couldn't help continuing the song in their heads, and when they did this, the auditory cortex remained active even though the music had stopped," Kraemer said.
The researchers said the findings extend previous research that showed sensory-specific memories are stored in the brain regions that first experienced those events.
"It's fascinating that although the ear isn't actually hearing the song, the brain is perceptually hearing it," said co-author William Kelley, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences.
Mandatory (Score:4, Funny)
We have the capability to make the world's first Bionic man.
Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before.
Better . . . stronger . . . faster.
- Julio
Ob FG (Score:2)
I don't want to spend a lot of money.
uh oh.. (Score:2, Funny)
"humm"
EWGAD *slap*
please think of the humanity and patent this quick
Prosthetics are great but.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Prosthetics are great but.. (Score:2)
Pain serves a useful "don't do that" function when it is from your body, but in a robot that can be repaired when the fight is over it is just an unneeded distraction.
Sex over IP ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sex over IP ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sex over IP ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Stimulation of other parts of the body is unnesessary if/when the signals this stimulation would trigger can be sent right into the brain. The brain would not know the difference between real stimulation and recorded or emulated signals.
Sending data right into the brain could make matrix-like simulations possible. However, it will probably take a lot of time before we have reverse engineered all of the brain's data structures.
Re:Sex over IP ? (Score:2)
Of course -- latency will affect your perception of your partner's reactions, and the delivery of your response to your partner. How could it not make a difference?
The further away you are in space, the more latency you'll have to deal with. That's just with normal EM delivery of information. Add communications paths with uncertain and variable delivery times (like the Internet) and you'd really have some challenging changes
It's not that hard (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's not that hard (Score:5, Funny)
I knew you would say that.
Re:It's not that hard (Score:5, Funny)
Also your obsession with small dogs in raincoats is getting out of hand.
Re:It's not that hard (Score:2)
Re:It's not that hard (Score:2)
Re:It's not that hard (Score:2)
Re:It's not that hard (Score:2)
And while you're at it, also include B, A, and Start, so we can at least enter the Konami code.
There's DRM in my DNA (Score:2, Funny)
However the effort required to sign up for these DRM'ed thoughts involves signing up to all sorts of "special deals", hurdles, traps - god forbid anyone actually read the license.
The quality of these DRM'ed thoughts may also be substandard.... but hey, at least those drunk ramblings will be legit!
Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
Porn.
Look out! (Score:3, Funny)
revolution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:revolution (Score:2)
Re:revolution (Score:2)
Or it turns toward her, and transforms in to Optimus Sexbot the robotic love machine!
Any sex crazed 13 year old geek can tell you what happens next.
I'm thinking this... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm thinking this... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I'm thinking this... (Score:2)
The lameness filter must be able to detect humour and mark the blank post as not lame!
Mind reading!
Re:I'm thinking this... (Score:2)
The REAL question we're all asking... (Score:5, Funny)
Actual research paper (Score:5, Informative)
Rizzuto, DS, Mamelak, AN, Sutherling, WW, Fineman, I and Andersen, RA (2005) Spatial selectivity in human ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. In press at Nature Neuroscience. [caltech.edu]
The functional organization of lateral prefrontal cortex is not well understood, and there is debate as to whether the dorsal and ventral aspects mediate distinct spatial and non-spatial functions, respectively. We show for the first time that recordings from human ventrolateral prefrontal cortex show spatial selectivity, supporting the idea that ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is involved in spatial processing. Our results also indicate that prefrontal cortex may be a source of control signals for neuroprosthetic applications.
For an overview of the neural prosthetics work in Richard Andersen's lab at Caltech, this presentation [caltech.edu] is handy.
"What're you thinking?" (Score:5, Funny)
They have suceeded where my girlfriend failed.
The brain's adaptive powers... (Score:5, Interesting)
Question is... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure about the english name, but i think it is in english also CP inability.
My friend born so that he is inable to correctly move his legs & arms or anything at all, because his nervous system has sustained damage. I'm not sure about the specifics, because we don't talk about it for obvious reasons.
The thing is, his mind is capable of moving correctly etc. but his nervous system & body isn't.
Badly spasmic etc which makes it even harder.
He needs someone to help him with everything, he can't even goto WC by himself.
He is fortunate enough that his hands etc. work enough to use a computer, eat by himself, even write somehow.
But would this help him to move to more independent life?
Those of which know better, what you think?
Don't know what to say (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't know what to say (Score:2)
Forget the disabled, I want it to improve my ET and Q3 performance. No more long neural transmission down my arm to the mouse.
Ghost in the Shell (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ghost in the Shell (Score:2)
My Idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the nice things about neural networks is that you dont neccesarily have to understand processes that occur during translation. I have often hypothesised that it might be possible to use the traits of a neural network to create an interface with the brain. Suppose there was a patient who had a degenerative eye condition that meant in 10yrs he or she would be completely blind. Forgetting the implications of connecting wetware to hardware for a moment- imagine if we could use a neural network to interface with the visual cortex of a patient , to learn to understand the electrical impulses on the patients visual cortex by way of matching them up with a camera mounted on the side of the head. Might it be possible for the patient to look at a tree using his real eye - the nueral network sees the tree with its camera and this way "Learns" what the patterns in the cortex represent.
Something like this (if it is possible) would have some quite phenomenal implications - especially if it were possible to "playback" the patterns into the cortex from the camera.
Would anyone who knows a bit more about these subjects care to discuss the possibilities of something like this?
Re:My Idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that it's not an interesting idea, but vision is probably too easy a problem to be worthwhile. Hearing may actually be harder.
Re:My Idea... (Score:2, Informative)
Not at all: http://www.cochlear.com/ [cochlear.com]
My mother's got one. Speaking with her, you cannot tell.
They all know what you think... (Score:2, Interesting)
Reverend Mother? (Score:2)
Homeland security and terrorism (Score:3, Interesting)
No suprises though (Score:5, Funny)
Yup. Titties and beer. Alternatively beer and titties. It all depends on how long it's been since my last beer.
Speaking of which it's fridge time ! No wait my g/f just went past. No she's going out, so it's definitely fridge time.
Time, July 1, 1974 (Score:4, Interesting)
Mind Reading Computer
The experiment looks like some ingenious test of mental telepathy. Seated inside a small isolation booth with wires trailing from the helmet on her head, teh subject seems deep in concentration. She does not speek or move. Near by, a white-coated scientist intently watches a TV screen. Suddenly, a little white dot hovering in the center of the screen comes to life. It sweeps to te top of the screen, then it reverses itself and comes back down. After a pause, it veers to the right, stops, moves to the left, momentarily speeds up and finally halts - almost as if it were under the control of some external intelligence.
The article goes on to describe the work of S.R.I. researcher Lawrence Pinneo in translating thoughts to action. Googling on his name in interesting.
Did this take 30 years to get from Stanford to Caltech?
Re:Time, July 1, 1974 (Score:2)
I checked it because I thought you were quoting from a Heinlein story featuring a Dr. Pinneo. I thought it was in "Green Hills of Earth", but I don't have a copy here right not...so I did the web search and I don't recognize it in the table of contents. I think the name was "Life-Line" (which the web reports as Heinlein's first sale).
There are indications that it was in the first editions(s?) of "The Man who Sold the Moon" (which,again I don't happen to have in front o
Pseudo arms/hands (Score:2)
I hope they can realize the goal of being able to read (and maybe eventually send feedback signal back to) the brain to give disabled people highly functional prosthetics.
But I also think this discovery has great uses for human augmentation. Just like people with six fingers (hexadactyly) can use all six fingers, I would imagine that with sufficient training (plus tuning of the control system), a person can "grow" extra arms. (Think Dr. Octavius in Spiderman 2...)
But I think t
Just goes to show (Score:2)
Man gets bionic arm (Score:3, Funny)
Just a matter of time until Amazon.com uses this (Score:2)
"Why the did you send me Greatest Lesbian Porn Volumes 1-69? I didn't fill out an order form for it!"
"Sir, we show that you've signed up for Amazon's 1-Think Shopping(tm), and you clearly wanted to buy it."
Re:Just a matter of time until Amazon.com uses thi (Score:2)
Get Back With Feedback (Score:2)
Now I can do 'dance dance revolution' (Score:3, Funny)
Duh! (Score:3, Funny)
Duh!
I, like the rest of the male half of the populace, was thinking "sex".
Now I'm thinking "Duh!", of course, but I was thinking "sex".Wait! OK, now I'm thinking "sex" again.
Re:beyond subliminal , now brain implants coming (Score:2)
Plus the subconscious is literal.
"Bush is God" wouldn't make your subconscious think of George W. Bush, but rather might have you worshipping a shrub in your front yard. Also, "bush" has a naughty (explicit) meaning (in the USA at least) as well, which could have interesting effects on your subconscious.
Re:beyond subliminal , now brain implants coming (Score:2)
This is your God [imdb.com].
Re:beyond subliminal , now brain implants coming (Score:3, Funny)
Re:1984.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The slowest network Human Computer (Score:2)
I see you're thinking about writing a letter.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:2)
sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex sex