jpillian Posted December 16, 2008 Share Posted December 16, 2008 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16267-mindreading-software-could-record-your-dreams.html 'Mind-reading' software could record your dreams 18:05 12 December 2008 by Celeste Biever Pictures you are observing can now be recreated with software that uses nothing but scans of your brain. It is the first "mind reading" technology to create such images from scratch, rather than picking them out from a pool of possible images. Earlier this year Jack Gallant and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, showed that they could tell which of a set of images someone was looking at from a brain scan. To do this, they created software that compared the subject's brain activity while looking at an image with that captured while they were looking at "training" photographs. The program then picked the most likely match from a set of previously unseen pictures. Now Yukiyasu Kamitani at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan has gone a step further: his team has used an image of brain activity taken in a functional MRI scanner to recreate a black-and-white image from scratch. "By analysing the brain signals when someone is seeing an image, we can reconstruct that image," says Kamitani. This means that the mind reading isn't limited to a selection of existing images, but could potentially be used to "read off" anything that someone was thinking of, without prior knowledge of what that might be. "It's absolutely amazing, it really is a very significant step forward," says John-Dylan Haynes of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. Dream catcher Kamitani starts by getting someone to look at a selection of images made up of black and white squares on a 10 by 10 square grid, while having their brain scanned. Software then finds patterns in brain activity that correspond to certain pixels being blacked out. It uses this to record a signature pattern of brain activity for each pixel. The person then sits in the scanner and is shown fresh patterns. Another piece of software then matches these against the list to reconstruct the pixels on a 10 by 10 grid. The quality of images that were recreated is quite crude. However, the word "neuron" and several numbers and shapes that people were indeed being shown (see image, top right) could be observed in the reconstructed images. It is an important proof of principle, says Haynes. As fMRI technology improves, Kamitani adds that an image could potentially be split into many more pixels, producing much higher quality images, and even colour images. The next step is to find out if it is possible to image things that people are thinking of - as well as what they are looking at - Haynes says it may be possible to "make a videotape of a dream". Ethical concerns Haynes also raises the prospect of "neural marketing", where advertisers might one day be able to read the thoughts of passers by and use the results to target adverts. "This [new research] specifically doesn't lead to this - but the whole spirit in which this is done is in line with brain reading and the applications that come with that," he says. "If you have a technique that allows you to read out what people are thinking we need clearer ethical guidelines about when and how you are able to do this," he says. "A lot of people want their minds to be read - take for example a paralysed person. They want us to read their thoughts," he says. "But it shouldn't be possible to do this for commercial purposes." Kamitani is well aware of the negative potential of the technology. "If the image quality improves, it could have a very serious impact on our privacy and other issues. We will have to discuss with many people - not just scientists - how to apply this technology," he says. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cherick Posted December 16, 2008 Share Posted December 16, 2008 My wife better never finds out about this, she would not like to see images of my dreams with Shakira Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpillian Posted December 16, 2008 Author Share Posted December 16, 2008 Sorta gives the tin foil hat some new found legitimacy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PiLfan Posted December 16, 2008 Share Posted December 16, 2008 Sorta gives the tin foil hat some new found legitimacy ain't no one recording my dreams :redpunch: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corcaigh Posted December 16, 2008 Share Posted December 16, 2008 ain't no one recording my dreams :redpunch: Not so fast. The foil hats are actually promoted and encouraged by the government as at certain frequencies they act as an amplifier, rather than attenuator of signals. :geek: All your brains are belong to us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metalhead Posted December 16, 2008 Share Posted December 16, 2008 :geek: All your brains are belong to us. LOL, omg that just cracked me up! Whew, can't stop laughing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corcaigh Posted December 16, 2008 Share Posted December 16, 2008 LOL, omg that just cracked me up! Whew, can't stop laughing But you already have a MetalHead Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corcaigh Posted December 16, 2008 Share Posted December 16, 2008 The perfect Christmas gift for the paranoid in your life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skins PR Posted December 17, 2008 Share Posted December 17, 2008 Friggin amazing... really it is. Also, I wish they had that when I was 13. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
China Posted December 17, 2008 Share Posted December 17, 2008 Supposedly we have lots of dreams every night we don't remember. It would be weird seeing these dreams with no recollection of them. Oh, and they need to work on that resolution, so that there are better images of my erotic dreams. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PokerPacker Posted December 17, 2008 Share Posted December 17, 2008 Supposedly we have lots of dreams every night we don't remember. It would be weird seeing these dreams with no recollection of them. Oh, and they need to work on that resolution, so that there are better images of my erotic dreams. why? 'cause otherwise your **** doesn't show up? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RonJeremy Posted December 17, 2008 Share Posted December 17, 2008 I have always wanted to invent this!!...but I am not that smart. Anyway... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corcaigh Posted December 17, 2008 Share Posted December 17, 2008 The original article is misleading as they are just taking signals from the visual cortex. So the title should be ''mind-reading software can tell what you're staring at", but that wouldn't have sounded as impressive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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