Quote :

"NEW YORK (AP) — It sounds like science fiction: While volunteers watched movie clips, a scanner watched their brains. And from their brain activity, a computer made rough reconstructions of what they viewed. Scientists reported that result Thursday and speculated such an approach might be able to reveal dreams and hallucinations someday "

http://news.yahoo.com/brain-scans-let-computer-reconstruct-movie-scenes-160154082.html



This is only the beginning

9/24/2011 3:48:18 AM

9/24/2011 7:45:57 AM

This is probably the most unbelievable thing I've seen so far regarding the brain. I seriously would not have expected that outcome.

The part I'm confused about is how they mapped the 18 million seconds of youtube clips. The three co authors would had to have spent 3 months sitting in an MRI machine watching youtube.

9/24/2011 9:18:03 AM

Watching dreams after they've happened could be one of the weirdest tv shows ever. Watching nightmares (to the person who had them) could be terrifying.

9/25/2011 3:03:18 AM

9/25/2011 7:27:56 AM

Just don't get stuck in limbo.

9/25/2011 9:10:32 AM

the dream is collasping

9/25/2011 11:23:08 AM

The clips they showed with the story don't really look that similar to me.

9/25/2011 7:27:01 PM

^considering this is a first step, and some people thought this was impossible, and this was unfathomable a few years ago, those pictures are god dawned amazing. Da Vinci couldn't have done better himself.

9/25/2011 7:57:40 PM

Here is the video

9/25/2011 8:58:21 PM

^^^Seriously? When there was a face, you see a face that is roughly the same size, orientation, and position. Seems eerily accurate to me.

I would guess that faces are easy to reconstruct using this method because we have facial recognition is like built in.

9/25/2011 9:22:03 PM

Japs did something similar in 2008, albeit only with simple letters and symbols:

message_topic.aspx?topic=551869

My post in the linked thread still expresses how I feel about this

9/26/2011 5:12:46 PM

whoa

9/26/2011 8:30:24 PM

9/26/2011 9:02:20 PM

Quote :

"Seriously? "

yeah, seriously. Just look at the pic on the video above your post. That blob could be anything and its supposed to be a bird.

9/26/2011 9:16:36 PM

You do know this is just in its infancy and it's only going to get better?


I mean... it's in its 100 baud modem phase right now. Give it time.

9/26/2011 10:50:18 PM

^^That blob would be enough for Boz to prove Brad Cooper did it.

9/27/2011 8:18:42 AM

This is from 1.5 years ago and I find this to be a bit cooler:

http://www.livescience.com/6205-scientists-read-minds-brain-scans.html

Quote :

"To see if they could discern even more complex information during mind-reading, scientists more recently had 10 volunteers watch three films, each seven-seconds long and featuring a different actress in a fairly similar everyday scenario on a typical urban street. For instance, in one movie, a woman rifled through her purse to find an envelope she then dropped into a mailbox, while in another, an actress finished her cup of coffee, which she then dropped into a trashcan. Participants watched the films 15 times. The researchers scanned the participants' brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while the participants were asked to recall the films. The data was run through a computer algorithm to identify brain activity patterns linked with memories for each of the movies. Using these patterns, the researchers could accurately predict which film volunteers were recalling as they had their brains scanned."

That is closer to "mind reading" than the one in the OP.

This is neat too, albeit quite 'primitive' compared to the one above:

Scientists See Numbers Inside People's Heads
http://www.livescience.com/7897-scientists-numbers-people-heads.html

9/27/2011 8:35:23 AM

^^^^Dear lord. Did you not watch the video? That part is pretty much the most poorly reconstructed clip in the whole damn thing.

[Edited on September 27, 2011 at 8:37 AM. Reason : ^]

9/27/2011 8:36:55 AM

Yeah, and even the reconstruction of that bird in motion was impressive. It's just that particular frame by itself that doesn't look like much.

9/27/2011 8:51:20 AM

I'd be interested in seeing what the dreams look like of people that have been blind since birth

[Edited on September 28, 2011 at 9:56 AM. Reason : could be dark with just sounds if they ever extract audio]

9/28/2011 9:55:06 AM

Quote :

"Paralyzed Man Uses Mind-Powered Robot Arm To Touch PITTSBURGH -- Giving a high-five. Rubbing his girlfriend's hand. Such ordinary acts – but a milestone for a paralyzed man. True, a robotic arm parked next to his wheelchair did the touching, painstakingly, palm to palm. But Tim Hemmes made that arm move just by thinking about it. Emotions surged. For the first time in the seven years since a motorcycle accident left him a quadriplegic, Hemmes was reaching out to someone – even if it was only temporary, part of a monthlong science experiment at the University of Pittsburgh. "It wasn't my arm but it was my brain, my thoughts. I was moving something," Hemmes says. "I don't have one single word to give you what I felt at that moment. That word doesn't exist." The Pennsylvania man is among the pioneers in an ambitious quest for thought-controlled prosthetics to give the paralyzed more independence – the ability to feed themselves, turn a doorknob, hug a loved one. The goal is a Star Trek-like melding of mind and machine, combining what's considered the most humanlike bionic arm to date – even the fingers bend like real ones – with tiny chips implanted in the brain. Those electrodes tap into electrical signals from brain cells that command movement. Bypassing a broken spinal cord, they relay those signals to the robotic third arm. This research is years away from commercial use, but numerous teams are investigating different methods. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/mind-powered-robot-arm_n_1003204.html?icid=maing-grid10%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl22%7Csec1_lnk2%7C103083 "

We're so close to unlocking, reading, and decoding the brain, this is getting ridiculous

10/11/2011 4:06:01 AM

10/11/2011 7:24:57 AM

after seeing the clip, i'm much less impressed

10/11/2011 9:35:13 AM

why exactly? I thought it was extremely impressive.

10/11/2011 9:42:18 AM

You could make a pretty awesome thriller like Minority Report + Inception using this research alone.

And yet, if we actually had all the technology in Minority Report, the response from this thread would surely be "meh."

[Edited on October 11, 2011 at 10:34 AM. Reason : Worst brain interface ever.]

10/11/2011 10:33:51 AM

Quote :

"We're so close to unlocking, reading, and decoding the brain, this is getting ridiculous"

LOL. We're getting closer. We are not close.

10/11/2011 11:17:24 AM

I think it's amazing given we're not 500 years off from burning people for being witches.

10/11/2011 12:36:03 PM

^^It reminds me of a quote I recently read out of my AI book. It was something like this:

"Believing that writing these types of programs will bring us closer to real artificial intelligence is like believing that someone climbing a tree is making progress toward reaching the moon."

10/11/2011 1:33:19 PM