Re:UC Berkeley Scientists Translate Brainwaves into Imagery
by mortenjorck on Thursday September 22, 2011 @10:46PM
(#3028643)
So in essence, the researchers are intercepting network traffic from the visual cortex while a subject is given a certain stimulus, then matching that traffic signature with signatures of similar stimuli. Which is to say, they're doing some very interesting traffic analysis, but aren't actually decoding any of the information itself.
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Re:UC Berkeley Scientists Translate Brainwaves into Imagery
by neilk on Friday September 23, 2011 @01:40PM
(#3030849)
Yes, but it is still a brilliant, brilliant hack. Reminds me a little of Norvig's observation that having enormous amounts of data changes everything.
He was referring to AI algorithms, but seriously, who would have thought that having YouTube would lead to this?
Re:UC Berkeley Scientists Translate Brainwaves into Imagery
by rflrob on Thursday September 22, 2011 @10:52PM
(#3028652)
On the other hand, if you have the traffic analysis done well enough, the information decoding is unimportant. Given the brain's pretty strong region specific activity, what parts of the brain are acting up are a pretty good correlate of the data in the stimulus.
To borrow and extend an example from Ender's Game, if you know what the train schedules are, you can figure out troop movements; even if you don't necessarily know which particular unit is going to which place, you still have a pretty good idea of what the military is gearing up for.
Re:UC Berkeley Scientists Translate Brainwaves into Imagery
by zerostar07 on Friday September 23, 2011 @07:35AM
(#3029617)
They are decoding it using their pre-computed lookup table. This is a very valid approach, since the fMRI signal is both slow and low resolution. It would be awesome to be able to record individual neuron firing en masse and in vivo, but we are not there yet.