Japanese Scientists Claim To Reconstruct Images From Brain Data 276
In a world first, a research group in Kyoto Japan has succeeded in processing and displaying optically received images directly from the human brain. Here's the Japanese press release for good measure. One step closer to broadcasting your dreams? The research is due to be published today in the US scientific journal Neuron
Dreaming Is A Private Thing (Score:3, Interesting)
And once again Isaac Asimov predicted this [wikipedia.org].
No more lack of artistic skills for me (Score:5, Interesting)
I have lots of cool images in my head for comics and wallpaper, however I lack the artistic talent to bring those images from my mind to paper/photoshop. Maybe soon I will be able to compensate for my lack of artistic ability.
Kinda neat, not that exciting though (Score:4, Interesting)
The visual cortex is one of the more understood areas of the brain, and decoding V1/V2 is low-hanging fruit. To the extent that memory and dreams back-project to these areas, perhaps recording parts of these experiences would be possible.
Making this practical and inexpensive would be quite a practical breakthrough though - imagine being able to imagine something and import it into GIMP from a headband. Doing this through MRI would be impractical unless someone would be able to keep the image stable in their head for long enough for a high resolution scan of the area (and bear the ~$700/hour cost of MRI).
This is so cool! (Score:3, Interesting)
This , if true , will have HUGE implications - we'll be able to see what people THINK. I don't know if you actually grasp the monument dimensions of this. Checking for terrorism, knowing if you are really loved, truth telling machines, like the internet, something like this can level the plain field for a long long time...
I still wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Feedback Loop? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No more lack of artistic skills for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Kinda neat, not that exciting though (Score:5, Interesting)
The Opposite (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if the process can be reversed, and images can be fed into the brain to create a dream sequence? Will people who really hate their reality use this as an escape and never try to wake up again?
Cool story!
Re:No more lack of artistic skills for me (Score:3, Interesting)
a research group in Kyoto Prefecture has succeeded in processing and displaying optically received images directly from the human brain.
Images you acquire optically follow a very different path from dreams or "mind pictures". The former aren't really detailled pictures, they are visual concepts that cannot be cast into a bitmap without interpretation. If we were to talk about the last dream you have made of a human, I could convince you that their hairs were of one or either color using suggestion techniques.
Nightmare recursion (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is so cool! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No more lack of artistic skills for me (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a memory from my childhood that I can almost recall at will, at almost any time. When I was 6, my father took me on a week long canoeing trip. I remember standing on a road, looking through some trees down to the river onto some cool rapids which we were about to go down. I can see in my mind what seems to be a perfect picture: the side of the road, the wooded slope covered with dry leaves, trees, and the river. It seems that I could just sit down a draw the scene from my memory. The funny thing is, every time I try to focus on some detail, for example when try to identify the trees, or look at a number on a mile-post next to the road, or something like that, the whole picture completely disappears, and I have hard time recalling it again. The details are simply not there at all.
Now if I were to draw the scene, I would undoubtedly substitute some sort of simplified shapes, or maybe just a pattern of shades of green, for the leaves. But you could look at the details of the drawing and see how it was done. You probably would be unable to identify the trees by their leaves, the drawing would not contain that much details, but you would be able to see the way the image is rendered on paper. I cannot do that with the mental image. I believe that in my mind I am able to render the overall image without actually rendering the details at all, not even as some sort of impressionist jumble of colors and shades. If that's the case, transferring this image onto paper would require filling in all the details in some way, which, IMHO, is exactly the hard part of drawing or painting.
I remember seeing this kind of thing (Score:1, Interesting)
.. a long time ago.
And here it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-computer_interface
"In 1999, researchers led by Yang Dan at University of California, Berkeley decoded neuronal firings to reproduce images seen by cats."