In what could be the first step toward recording your dreams, 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. That means it won’t be long before you can share your thoughts and dreams with others the way you share your flickr pics. They’ve successfully displayed simple images produced in the human brain on a computer screen.
The device converts electrical signals sent to the visual cortex into images that can be viewed on a computer screen. In the experiment, they showed test subjects the six letters in the word neuron and successfully reconstructed the word on screen by measuring brain activity. So, is this awesome or scary as hell? I vote scary.
I don’t want my wife knowing that I dream about other hot women, and that dream about me as Batman with a Victoria’s Secret model as a sidekick was just plain wrong.
[Pink Tentacle]
TAGS:
brain, extract, images, Record, Scientists
For real? This is awesome!!!
Now action man’s dreams will be like putty in my evil hands HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
lies
…This is a dream come true for me. I’ve always wanted to do something like this. Ever since I was little I wanted to record my dreams. I’m just sad it took so long for this to be invented…
Something’s fishy. Why are the images of the two N’s identical, static and all?
Anyone thinking acid?
What would Orwell have to say about this?
acid, right on
It’s a fake. The letters are likely Photoshopped.
Clearly photoshopped.
Leave it to the Japs to come up with something like this haha.
Although, very clever and cool technology, I don’t think this will be able to record dreams. They are scanning the brain activity as the images are being viewed by the test subject. This effectively puts a tap on the connection sending electric signals from the eye to the brain. Much like reading the electric signals from the CCD chip in your digital camera.
When dreaming, what you “see” is being created by the brain and not by signals from your eyes.
Still, this is a very cool technology (and I may be wrong…) definitely worth a stumble!
I call bunk
donde esta el proof?
I think this is pretty legit, yahoo news writing about it and all… http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081211/sc_afp/sciencejapanbrainoffbeat_081211052641
Maybe it was so much work to retrieve each letter that the scientists said “well, we’re not going to do that again… just copy the letter”
Even if this did work, what possibility would there be that your brain sees things the same way mine does?
Methinks Luke’s on to something.
Think about it, you wont need a digital camera anymore!
Oh, yes.. and the police can plug you in and retrieve all those thoughts you had!
“Images” are one thing; thoughts and dreams quite another! These guys know what they’re looking for.
No… keep doing this kind of thing.. and the world is doomed.
bs
Sounds to me that they’ve just managed to record the electrical pattern produced by the visual cortex and then feed it into some sort of pattern recognition net which can make a guess of the letter seen. If you do an initial training run where you know what the patterns produced by each letter are, then it’s not a big leap to recognise the same pattern again. I’d imagine the hard bit is capturing the pattern in the first place.
Doing the same thing for patterns produced by the entire brain is another matter entirely, presumably you can isolate the visual cortex reasonably effectively, but thought seems to take place in a pretty distributed manner across the entire brain, so it would be a lot more difficult to isolate the bits you’re interested in.
I’d strongly suspect that the diagram picture was produced for illustrative purposes only though, I’d be very surprised if the visual cortex electrical patterns looked anything like that.
I agree with Alan its just for illustrative purposes.
Got a citation? I’d be interested in reading the original paper.
I also agree with Alan. It is this article’s author that has messed up the presentation of this scientific achievement. Maybe someone with some sense should rewrite the story.
If it’s true, pretty cool. The movie Brainscan is coming true after all.
references?
Those of you asking for references?
Here it is:
http://download.cell.com/neuron/pdf/PIIS0896627308009586.pdf
Journal: Neuron
it would be cool to be able to like take pictures with your eyes and then upload them to a pc
This website is photoshopped. The internet is photoshopped (clearly). The receptionist at your office; obviously photoshopped.
Also photoshopped: paychecks, umbrellas, Wal-Mart, prime rib, dishwashers, basically any kitchen appliance, and penguins. Seriously, how can an animal be that awesome without photoshop?
That last comment was photoshopped also.
Touche.
This is just the initial stages of the technology. The end result is a catalog of human brainwaves. Once a complete library is built, thoughts will be deciphered much like current day cryptography. Or binary. We need to shut things like this down, or our great great grandchildren will hate us for it, much like I’m annoyed with the last 3 generations’ complete ignorance to maintaining a republic.
Damned if my wife gets hold on to this evil machine. Her sister might be upset too.
Great. Just what we need. Something that will show us what people are thinking about… it’ll be easier to just take pictures of breasts the old fashioned way- with a few beers and an inexpensive camera.
I can get the same results as these “scientists” for under $20
@ none: It’s Brainstorm. Entirely different movie. Brainscan was about a videogame that killed people.
“I don’t want my wife knowing that I dream about other hot women, and that dream about me as Batman with a Victoria’s Secret model as a sidekick was just plain wrong.”
Maybe you shouldn’t write it on the internet then.
I smell a hoax…
This is not at all surprising – it has long been known that sensory inputs have direct a cortical correlation. This is simply showing the absense of light perception along a relatively large portion of the visual cortex. It’s very different from mapping the perception of the actual numbers, and it would be wrong to say that they are projecting a “thought”.
if any machine has a tendency to map my mind in whole world then come to me i am ready.
extracting images from the brain?
my ass
This articles doesn’t explain anything about the experiment… The subjects were shown 400 random images then the letters neuron, which they had not been shown b4. The computer had analyzed the electrical impulses of the brain from the first 400 images and developed a system of recognizing certain image patterns. This is why the letters look extremely fuzzy.. The computer’s database was fairly small. Also, actual dream-mapping and monitoring color is not yet possible. Some people estimate it should be possible by 2025 to monitor dreams, others say 2050.
Well I work in neurosciences. i`m a medical pro.
Look to state of art machine in electrophysiology, machines for sensing brain waves and other bio potential.
can you inform me on that. Or help me decide procuring one.
thanks
1. Guys, its not fake. This has appeared on a number of other websites including Times (Yes, they have a website), and msn. Search for it yourself if you want to, a search of the title “Scientists extract images directly from the brain” on google should be all you need.
2. The reason the above and bottom pictures look identical is because the test subject was looking at this picture. He was then to think about the picture, and the scientists reconstructed it from there.
It’s extremely dangerous! They’re equivalent to gynecologists with gloves off. Check out Physforum Science on web. Forum: puzzling questions – Mind reader machine. It’s all true. It’s not drugs or E.T.’s IT’s dangerous! It’s Hitler in charge of N.A.T.O.
Someone is using a mind reader machine illegally in L.A. Check out Physforum Science on the web. Forum: Puzzling Questions – Mind Reader Machine. Where’s the A.C.L.U.?
I love to see this will evolve everything. All can be now just pure thought, designs can be done faster. Contest on the best designs would be just the best, well thought out idea. Videogames, Alzheimer, dreams!, what else can be discovered like this? Like LdsNana says, WILD!