Scientists Successfully Extract Images from the Brain

[ExAm]

Uh, holy fuckin' shit (http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/12/scientists-extract-images-directly-from-brain/).



Scientists extract images directly from brain (http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/12/scientists-extract-images-directly-from-brain/)

12 Dec 2008

http://www.pinktentacle.com/images/neuron.jpg
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.


I don't know what to think. On the one hand, fuckin' awesome! I can replay my dreams! On the other, hellooooo, thought police :gonk:

[Reaper Man]

That is awesome. +1 for Materialism and Functionalism.

[Bodzilla]

well you see the thing is, i have alot of fucked up shit going on in my head, and the last thing that i would like to happen is people being able to judge me opn it, Cause while it's in my head, it's in my head, but when people can crack that apart, they might judge me differently.

[p0lar_bear]

Get the fuck out of people's heads.

Can we just leave the human brain as a mystery?

[StankBacon]

yah i can see nothing but bad coming from this..

if people knew what i thought id be fucked lol.

[n00b1n8R]

Oh awesome.

[-[Iagan]-]

as awsm as the technology may be, i have the feeling it will get abused or misused.
stil, pretty kewll :)

[n00b1n8R]

wtf I know you :aaaaa:

[-[Iagan]-]

haaaaaaaaaai :)

[Zombie Bait]

Wow, just when you thought your brain was the only safe place in the world. Now they can't even leave that alone. Oh well. :ohsnap:

[Hotrod]

Shit, that's awesome, but like many of you have said, why don't we keep our minds to ourselves? Sure, this might be good for criminal cases, but seriously, don't we get any privacy anymore? My mind is my only refuge from the world, if they take that away, then what? What will I become but just another little toy they can play with?

My dreams often show my desires, my fears, my hopes, etc... If somebody had access to those, they could possibly control my life with that knowledge. Those hopes also contain many secrets that I'd rather keep to myself, and again, if they had those, what would happen?

No, as I said, it's awesome that they've figured out how the brain works, to an extent that they can extract images from it, but this could, no, will be abused, and it could possibly take away any privacy we have left.

[Zombie Bait]

Scientist=Puppeteers
Us=Puppets
Outcome=We're all fucked.

[FluffyDucky™]

We will be long gone before people will be able to know what we think. In terms of the technolgy being improved, tested, trialed, made properly, etc etc.

[Heathen]

Get the fuck out of people's heads.

Can we just leave the human brain as a mystery?

No.

Its like the oceans. We know more about space than the shit we have right here at home.

[Masterz1337]

Fringed.

[klange]

Woah, guys, settle down! They just figured out to read sight while it's happening, we're still safe from mind reading for a few years.

But then... then what shall we do?

[LlamaMaster]

Haha, I agree with what the rest of you are saying. I have a lot of fucked up stuff going on in my head I would never want anybody to see. Still, it would be awesome to digitally record your dreams and play them back on a monitor. Or, at least, the parts of the dreams you want to be seen. :3

[ShadowSpartan]

This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota
Website is down, is there another source?

[Jelly]

Get the fuck out of people's heads.

Can we just leave the human brain as a mystery?
That is like the opposite of human nature.

I think this is great; the more we know about the human brain, the better. Lets us learn more about neurological diseases, and could even lead to the schoolboy's dream of having knowledge transferred into your brain instead of going and learning it. Ossum.

[mech]

I want to download my brain to my computer.

[teh lag]

Cool, not so much scary (yet) since you have to be hooked up to an actual computer for it to work. I don't think the fears of governments reading our thoughts will come true for quite a while - at least until our brains are all implanted with tiny MRI devices.


(Those wouldn't even be possible to make.)

[deathret]

I want to download my brain to my computer.

I want to upload my computer to my brain... make finals a little easier...:cool:

[Zombie Bait]

Hehe, yeah. Taking tests would be a whole lot easier.......
Except if it overloads, then you have exploding gray stuff!
If your brain was a computer. Maybe, i dunno.

[deathret]

Hehe, yeah. Taking tests would be a whole lot easier.......
Except if it overloads, then you have exploding gray stuff!

Ummm... that won't happen. First I have heard that we only use about 10% of the capacity of our brain. Second, if it is like any other memory module, it will jsut start to write over old data.

[TheGhost]

Reminds me of the show Fringe.

[CN3089]

First I have heard that we only use about 10% of the capacity of our brain.

Maybe you do. (http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp) http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c251/CN3089/Emoticons/awesomegrin.gif

[Hotrod]

Maybe you do. (http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp) http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c251/CN3089/Emoticons/awesomegrin.gif
Yeah, what'd be the point of having all that if we didn't use it?

[kenney001]

shit nvm...

[Rob Oplawar]

What you guys are forgetting is that in order for this to work, subjects have to sit perfectly still in a giant machine for hours on end, deliberately concentrating on images, just to calibrate the thing. I'm going out on a limb to say that every brain is going to be unique, so every individual will have to view a few control images before it can give any meaningful result.

Couple that with the fact that, even they did miniaturize the technology while tremendously increasing its accuracy, they still have to immobilize your head within its range.


Usually I like to go all :tinfoil: in these threads just for shits and giggles, but in this case, since it's so cool, I am gonna say it's safe to assume that the government is not going to spy on our brains while we sleep and that this technology will do wonders for many fields and be ultimately of huge benefit to the medical (and perhaps machine learning) communities.

[ultama121]

This is awesome. When the technology involves, I would love to record all of my abstract cool dreams into video. :awesomesanta:

This is of course assuming that day will ever come. :fail:

[p0lar_bear]

That is like the opposite of human nature.

I think this is great; the more we know about the human brain, the better. Lets us learn more about neurological diseases, and could even lead to the schoolboy's dream of having knowledge transferred into your brain instead of going and learning it. Ossum.

I posted my initial reaction, which was more a reaction to what it might lead to. I'm futurephobic, what after seeing movies like The Matrix and Terminator, and playing games like Megaman X and shit. While I do think it's neat that we're making advances into these previously-untouchable realms of science and figuring out things that have been a mystery since the dawn of time, I can't help but think; we make all these stories, movies, and games about the robot apocalypse (now less popular than the zombie apocalypse), yet still make advances towards this eventuality.

It bothers me, even though I'm sure my generation's going to be long gone before Skynet launches and we get assimilated by the Borg. It's human nature at it's best: "oh, that's not gonna happen to us."

Again, I think this is neat, futurephobia aside.

[DEElekgolo]

GTFO my brain.

[ExAm]

I posted my initial reaction, which was more a reaction to what it might lead to. I'm futurephobic, what after seeing movies like The Matrix and Terminator, and playing games like Megaman X and shit. While I do think it's neat that we're making advances into these previously-untouchable realms of science and figuring out things that have been a mystery since the dawn of time, I can't help but think; we make all these stories, movies, and games about the robot apocalypse (now less popular than the zombie apocalypse), yet still make advances towards this eventuality.

It bothers me, even though I'm sure my generation's going to be long gone before Skynet launches and we get assimilated by the Borg. It's human nature at it's best: "oh, that's not gonna happen to us."

Again, I think this is neat, futurephobia aside.It's not an eventuality, given that robots can not, can. not. go against their programming.

[DEElekgolo]

We think in 2 bit colors.

[p0lar_bear]

It's not an eventuality, given that robots can not, can. not. go against their programming.

Depends on the programming. If someone develops a true Smart AI, we're fucked.

[DaneO'Roo]

and so the frailty and unique experience of human emotion is ready to be marketed on. The mystery of life is solved, and thus reasons to keep on chuggin in our little lives will diminish.

Why do we always push for knowledge, to understand?

Some things are just meant to be kept special. Our thoughts are our own, they're what separates us from each other individual. Your own internal dialogue, about to be openly exploited. Whats next, brain advertising?

[FluffyDucky™]

Yes. Get with the times, geeze dane. Also, if we don't move into these sorts of technologies, "true smart AI's" will never be created. In my opinion, it would be awesome, I Robot, ftw! :)

[ExAm]

Depends on the programming. If someone develops a true Smart AI, we're fucked.
It would be coded with a failsafe. No matter how "smart" the AI is, it can never go against its failsafe programming.

[Apoc4lypse]

well you see the thing is, i have alot of fucked up shit going on in my head, and the last thing that i would like to happen is people being able to judge me opn it, Cause while it's in my head, it's in my head, but when people can crack that apart, they might judge me differently.

agreed... xD

all my crazy pr0n fetishes might be revealed :o

still an amazing breakthrough, then again I think it'd be cheating if artists were alloud to simply just think and make stuff... it removes the mental challenge of realizeing the images in ur head and actually replicating them on paper, these relizations or "heavy" thought about what your visualizing helps excercise your creativity, and if we can use technology to bypass that process our creativity will probably decrease over time. (that is if you always rely on it...) kind of how were all lazy nowadays cuz we have dishwashers and usually don't want to wash dishes and makes actually having to wash them manually annoying as hell plus ur not very fast at it either like u normally would be if the dishwasher never existed.

Idk it sounded like a good comparision in my mind lol.

no not those kind of porn fetishes you sickos...

[Zombie Bait]

This is awesome. When the technology involves, I would love to record all of my abstract cool dreams into video. :awesomesanta:

This is of course assuming that day will ever come. :fail:

Aww. By the tme it happens, we will either be dead, undead, or a bag of bones.

[Rob Oplawar]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: My goal in life is to help bring about the technological singularity as soon as possible. Whatever intelligence that we have created and will create is modeled in our own image; if the robots destroy all humans then I'll just be happy that our children (the machines) are now successfully spreading across the planet and hopefully the galaxy eventually. But I think it's much more likely that as the line between human and machine blurs (as enabled by machines such as this mind-reading thingamajig) the singularity will be the next stage in human evolution, allowing true symbiosis between man and machine.

*thinks about it for a second*

We are the Borg.

e: Seriously, in my version of Star Trek, the Borg would be good guys. If Star Trek were at all logical, the Borg would realize that forceful assimilation was counterproductive, and what's more they would not be so grotesque (and inexplicably slow moving) but would truly be the highly refined organism/machines that they claimed to be, beautiful in their near-perfection.

[Dwood]

I was thinking of a hive conjoiner thing. Not the borg, per-se but we can all read each other's thoughts etc.

I like this in that we can draw images simply by thinking of them! That would be cool.

As long as i'm the only one allowed to do it.

[nooBBooze]

Meh. I can't really see this going anywhere. They can only see what they can safely assume the subject sees. Without prior knowledge of what the subject sees and the state of the brain when it doesn't see it, they can't do anything.
Although I too suffer from futurephobia, the thought that there are no thoughts to be found in the brain brings some relief from the nightmare of an allknowing, allpowerfull society degrading us to it's drones. In my opinion, thoughts as we think them, cannot be tranferred and are an essential part of the one subjectivity. Although we ourselves can describe them [psychologists and pyschiatrists rely on these descriptions], we still force them into the flat dimension of language [including social constrictions like "would that be an appropiate thing to say?"]. If neurologists analyse the brain and its electrochemical processes, all they really do is making vague [but admittely correct] statements about general tendencies. So, thoughts might just really be free.

[il Duce Primo]

If we can take images out of our mind, I think we can put them in. Futuristic game. All you have to do is plug your cable into your head. [/awesome]

[CN3089]

If we can take images out of our mind, I think we can put them in. Futuristic game. All you have to do is plug your cable into your head. [/awesome]
Or, you know, they could just display what they want you to see on some sort of screen in front of your eyes http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c251/CN3089/Emoticons/emot-pcgaming.gif



perhaps we could call this technology tele-vision http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c251/CN3089/Emoticons/emot-allears.gif

[paladin]

I'm scared.