
Scientists extract images directly from brain - rms
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/12/scientists-extract-images-directly-from-brain/
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ars
They took the images from the brain, but they might not have gotten it from
the mind - it may have come for circuitry associated with the eyes, rather
that the circuity associated with thinking.

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

~~~
robg
Exactly. The visual system produces a very stable activation pattern, relative
to other senses and multidimensional objects. The noise inherent in those
other systems is probably the best protection of our inner privacy. There
simply isn't a code to be read because there's little systematicity from one
moment, or person, to the next. The visual system is as good as it gets and
even then only when you're looking at a prescribed object.

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.

~~~
robg
For instance, here's a seminal paper predicting which category (faces, place,
object) was going to be recalled from studied pictures and a second or two
before it was actually recalled:

[http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/310/5756/1963.pdf?maxt...](http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/310/5756/1963.pdf?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Polyn&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT)

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>

~~~
aswanson
Do you have any publications of your research online?

~~~
robg
Been meaning to put a home page together.

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

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randrews
To get past the creepiness aspect, let's say that you can only view what
someone else is seeing. That's still pretty useful.

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.

~~~
Network_Punk
If you're using a helmet, might as well use a camera instead...

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)

~~~
astine
You wouldn't get any of the effects of blurred vision, crossed eyes, or some
such. Also, eyes are far better cameras than anything you'd fit on a helmet.

~~~
ecuzzillo
In some ways. If you recorded just what the rods and cones detected, you'd
actually get a really small, really high-resolution area in the center (the
fovea) with the rest at extremely much lower resolution. So if you recorded
what the quarterback saw, but without the post-processing done by the brain to
cache some of the things recently glanced at, it might be pretty hard to
watch.

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sidsavara
Alas the account is suspended.

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.

~~~
arram
_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?

~~~
kirse
_They've established the basic principle. All it needs now is refinement._

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.

~~~
liuliu
You lead the topic to a very big question. If you think here computer is not
doing any interpretation, what you actually say is computer learning methods
don't mean computer can think. In this article, scientists do make computer do
some "interpretation" because the training data and test data are different.
(NEW images and reconstruct).

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.

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ShardPhoenix
In the long term, this has great potential for improving communication -
imagine being able to visualize something and show it to other people
instantly, rather than having to try to draw it or put it into words.

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.

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rms
[http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273%2808%2900958-...](http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273%2808%2900958-6)
is the abstract. Some anonymous soul will probably Scribd the paper at some
point in the future also.

~~~
arjunlall
Its on Scribd

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/8857889/Visual-Image-
Reconstructio...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/8857889/Visual-Image-
Reconstruction-from-Human-Brain-Activity-using-a-Combination-of-Multiscale-
Local-Image-Decoders)

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arram
This might be the most exciting science news I've ever read. The implications
are breathtaking.

~~~
jimbokun
I can think of a lot of negative implications if this technology progresses
the way they think it will. Can you imagine how excited governments will be
about being able to "read the terrorists' minds" with this new toy?

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.

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Tichy
I don't think it is reading pictures from the brain at all. The way I
understand it, it can only recognised pictures the computer has learned
before.

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.

~~~
kirse
_I think there was an experiment with a cat where they actually generated an
image from what fell on the cat's retina._

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!

~~~
ars
They did do that, it was in Scientific American in an article about the eyes.
They they did not take it from the visual cortex though, but rather from
neurons coming from the retina.

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

~~~
eru
They put smashed bananas into the cats' brains to record the signals.

(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.)

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jsmcgd
Supposedly you can hear what people are thinking by sampling the nervous
signals sent to the larynx.

[http://www.thinkartificial.org/machine-interfaces/audeo-
neck...](http://www.thinkartificial.org/machine-interfaces/audeo-neckband-
neural-interface/)

~~~
whacked_new
This is quite different than the OP's image reconstruction, and it isn't
really what one is thinking (i.e. in your head). You need to consciously send
motor commands to your vocal chord for the system to pick up your "thoughts."
Essentially, you complete the entire speech process (from thoughts to motor
signals), but the device completes the final step, rather than your vocal box.

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dmoney
_"This technology can also be applied to senses other than vision..."_

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

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utnick
I wish I lived a couple thousand years from now.

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

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dangoldin
Damn - This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota

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

~~~
arram
Here's the article:

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."

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light3
Protoss voice:

"psi limit exceeded, require more cpu quota"

~~~
gscott
Or a summery of your life from your eyes,leaving out the bad parts of course -
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/plotsummary>

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mattmaroon
If my wife ever acquires this technology I am screwed.

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fbailey
brilliant and they used a very old mac for it!

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jpwagner
a-ha discovered this technology years ago to make their video "take on me"

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vaksel
shouldn't be long now until we can put imagery directly into the brain

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ram1024
has to be the scariest thing i've read all year

~~~
tc
When this kind of technology replaces keyboards, mice, and touch screens, do
you think that mainstream audiences might begin to appreciate the value in
knowing exactly what the software on your personal devices does, and which
master that software serves?

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.

~~~
jodrellblank
Ever since I read the story of writing a backdoor in the unix login prompt,
then writing that change into the compiler so the login prompt code looks
clean, then writing that change into the running compiler, so the compiler
code looks clean, but the running compiler will backdoor itself or the login
prompt, I've had the feeling that the best bet is not to trust as far as
possible and not to worry as far as possible.

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.

~~~
mechanical_fish
The story you're referring to is Ken Thompson's _Reflections on Trusting
Trust_ :

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

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grouchyOldGuy
This is both awesome and creepy. That makes it aweseepy or creepsome.

