Amazing Video of a Brain Perceiving the External World 25
redletterdave points out work from Japanese researchers who produced an incredible visualization of how a brain perceives its environment. Studying zebrafish larvae, the scientists were able to observe neuronal signals in real time as the zebrafish saw and identified is prey, a paramecium. The results are illustrated in a brief video posted to YouTube, and in a longer video abstract hosted at Current Biology. (Direct download). The work is important because it demonstrates direct mapping of external stimuli to internal neuron activity in the optic tectum.
after filming the giant squid too! (Score:2)
Japan is on a roll! Keep it coming!
Once we can film human thoughts (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Machine learning will be incredibly important, since each user's pathways will be different. Not to mention brain plasticity means they are subject to change.
more likely we will become gigantic couch blobs (Score:5, Insightful)
since the exact mechanism of addiction will be discovered down to the last neuron, corporations can then exploit that information to guarantee addiction to whatever digital product they manufacture. id imagine it will be some kind of cross between the following
1. Home shopping network
2. Online gambling
3. MMO gaming
4. Pornography
Re: (Score:2)
Steve figured all that shit out before he died.
Re: (Score:2)
Steve figured all that shit out before he died.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/image/1008w/h/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/comic-riffs/StandingArt/BORSjobs.png?uuid=cuxS4psaEeG_E2Y-wvX7KA [washingtonpost.com]
Re: (Score:2)
since the exact mechanism of addiction will be discovered down to the last neuron, corporations can then exploit that information to guarantee addiction to whatever digital product they manufacture. id imagine it will be some kind of cross between the following
1. Home shopping network
2. Online gambling
3. MMO gaming
4. Pornography
nah, it will be Nature Fresh brand milk
Re: (Score:3)
Possibly. Or justice will take on a new, and probably insane role -> peeking into a suspect's mind to reveal what they think about various things.
Except that that would be an extremely naive approach, as one may entertain billions of thoughts, but only act on a handful of them. However, given the low quality of 'social' justice I've seen up until now, I'd much prefer to be dead before they put any kind of system like that into play. The rampant stupidity of trying to explain to a court with a senile ("Wh
Brain cells (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a video of a researcher that sliced the brain so you can see the individual neurons, and trace their connections (~1000 connections per neuron). He flies through those connections in the recovered mapping.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNyDSx14yIQ [youtube.com]
so basically thunder (Score:2)
is like the earth thinking
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Or three hours ahead of yesterday's news.
I wonder what a brain scan of a Slashdotter perceiving old news would look like.
Re: (Score:2)
Kidding right? That's Tectum, and in humans it is a structure in the midbrain (the human midbrain, part of the brainstem, is shaped a lot like the zebrafish organ in the video, by the way) that processes vision in a mostly pre-conscious way. So,in the zebrafish, we probably have to say that the tectum signaling in that video may not be the fish thinking, in the same way we do, at least. Google for blindsight.
W. Grey Walter's "Toposcope" (Score:5, Informative)
This is reminiscent of the "toposcope," built In the 1940s by late W. Grey Walter. It was a 22-channel EEG, or perhaps one should say EES for electroencephaloscope, which displayed a map of the brain's electrical activity in real time... if I recall correctly, on 22 "magic eye" tubes, allowing the special propagation of brain waves to be visualized.