I would like to see if they could read images if a person just thought about them, rather than actually saw them.

In other words, ignore the PR about downloading thoughts and dreams. We can decode some stuff from fMRI activity patterns but we're soon swamped by noise, even when using machine learning techniques. The data just isn't there. It's like trying to predict the weather two weeks from now. The system is inherently noisy.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/310/5756/1963.pdf?maxt...

Still, that's a big difference from predicting (or mindreading) the particular item.

And here's a good review of that and similar work:

http://polyn.com/struct/NormEtal06_TICS.pdf

Here are two empirical reports: http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/26/18/4917 http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/27/14/3790

And here's a review: http://www.psych.upenn.edu/stslab/assets/pdf/TS_CONB05.pdf

Happy to answer questions at grob AT mass inst tech

This, while not directly relevant, might be helpful: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/What_and_where_pathways

Also, they are using fMRI activations, which means they don't record from neurons directly, but look at cerebral blood flow (which is linked to neuronal activation; the more the neuron does, the more oxygen it needs).

I imagine it would take a bit of training to be able to visualize images in ways that a computer can read them - I imagine children would be best at learning thought-commands quickly. Just as my grandparents could never quite learn how to touch-type, I imagine my grandchildren will kick my ass at thinking into their computers ;)

Imagine that you make this high enough resolution that it's like watching TV, and then small enough that it'll fit in a helmet.

Then, you could record what someone is seeing and hearing, without having a cameraman around. It would be a cool way to, for example, watch a football play from the eyes of the quarterback. It might be a very interesting way to make movies.

Would be far cheaper, and could always use eye-tracking to move the camera (or even just zoom and pan to give the effect of looking)

Basically, they had this experiment where they showed the subjects 400 12x12 (I think) pixel images of letters and measured various things in their brain.

They used (most likely) neural nets and machine learning to draw conclusions about what was going on, and then they showed the subjects a series of NEW images that were not in the training set, measured the brain activity, and they were able to display a graphic that had white, grey and black pixels that closely resembled the white on black lettering that they had trained it on.

They were not exact pictures, but kind of like fuzzy images that you could see the whiter areas were were the letters were, and the darker areas in the images were aslo where the background was.

Interesting stuff, but I think a far cry from the reading people's dreams they believe is possible in the future.

Why? They've established the basic principle. All it needs now is refinement. Have you ever seen a picture of the first transistor?

This "basic principle" is no different when they do other MRIs that can detect patterns in brain activity (specific to one individual). The computers aren't doing any interpretation of brain activity here, just recognizing what it has been preprogrammed to to recognize.

What you're proposing is that we build a recognition database of every single brain pattern and its correlating image. Damn, what kind of computer does that remind you of? Oh yea - the human brain!

Not only that, but each individual has unique brain patterns, so this "computer" would have to be able to interpret a wide variety of signals. We're so far off from understanding the brain that this isn't happening, ever.

People here have much more to do to fulfill the goal of "reconstructing high resolution, color image", but the problem is not computers do think or not.

For example, it could greatly speed up teaching if both the student and teacher were equipped with an advanced version of this device, since the teacher could immediately see and easily correct any mistaken visualizations the student had.

It could be the human-to-human equivalent of going from 56k to broadband.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/8857889/Visual-Image-Reconstructio...

Are there any good implications? The "get images directly from the artists brain" doesn't sound too exciting to me, compared to the potential for 1984 style chicanery.

As an analogy, imagine your eye lid twitches every time somebody mentions George Bush. The computer would then learn that when your eye lid twitches, you are thinking about George Bush. Not very exciting imo.

I think there was an experiment with a cat where they actually generated an image from what fell on the cat's retina. THAT was scary to me.

The only study I've ever seen on this has been based on simply grabbing the image off the reflection of the eye. I can't imagine this actually involved hooking up a cat's visual cortex to some sort of interface, the sheer processing power required for that sort of visual information processing is unfathomable.

If not, link me!

The retina has various layers and they took a look at what each layer does.

(It's less ridiculous than it sounds: Bananas contain a certain enzyme that helps to capture the neurons signals. The porridge they put around the sensors in the cats' brains contained many more things besides the bananas. My fiancee was studying that stuff in university.)

More here: http://www.stanley.bme.gatech.edu/research_topics_vision.htm...

http://www.thinkartificial.org/machine-interfaces/audeo-neck...

Sweet, it could be used to make music without having to learn an instrument.

I think mankind is really going to be able to do some great things once we understand the brain fully.

Can anyone summarize or is it basically what it sounds like? How accurate is it?

Scientists extract images directly from brain

<image> "Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.

The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.

Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, such as the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the test subjects were viewing based solely on their brain activity.

For now, the system is only able to reproduce simple black-and-white images. But Dr. Kang Cheng, a researcher from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, suggests that improving the measurement accuracy will make it possible to reproduce images in color.

“These results are a breakthrough in terms of understanding brain activity,” says Dr. Cheng. “In as little as 10 years, advances in this field of research may make it possible to read a person’s thoughts with some degree of accuracy.”

The researchers suggest a future version of this technology could be applied in the fields of art and design — particularly if it becomes possible to quickly and accurately access images existing inside an artist’s head. The technology might also lead to new treatments for conditions such as psychiatric disorders involving hallucinations, by providing doctors a direct window into the mind of the patient.

ATR chief researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani says, “This technology can also be applied to senses other than vision. In the future, it may also become possible to read feelings and complicated emotional states.”

The research results appear in the December 11 issue of US science journal Neuron."

"psi limit exceeded, require more cpu quota"

I would never put so much as my private SSH keys on a closed source machine that pulls updates in the background or a device on which a third party is root (iPhone, G1). I certainly can't imagine plugging my brain into any such creature.

Smart people will always be able to outsmart me, stupid people with power or desirables will always be able to coerce me into lowering my standards.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html