Breakthrough Could Enable Others to Watch Your Dreams and Memories

[n2doc]

By Philip Yam | September 22, 2011 | 2

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Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have reconstructed the internal “movie” that plays in a person’s head. To re-create dynamic visual experiences, they used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain activity of volunteers (the other members of the research team) as they watched short movie clips (left panel in the video below). A computational model crunched the fMRI data to reproduce the images, as shown in the right panel.

The team, led by Shinji Nishimoto and Jack Gallant, say that the technology is decades away from enabling people to read others’ thoughts and intentions. It could become a powerful tool to communicate with people who cannot verbalize, such as stroke victim and coma patients. This visual image reconstruction study appears in the September 22 Current Biology.

video at link

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/09/22/breakthrough-could-enable-others-to-watch-your-dreams-and-memories-video/

[valerief]

1. Cool, but do we have to dream about Steve Martin for it work? nt

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. Very, very cool...and perhaps just a bit creepy! n/t

[Speck Tater]

3. I see a new kind of artist in our future.

One who can imagine an image clearly enough to visualize it directly, without canvass or paint. Maybe art schools of the future will include meditation classes to help the artist focus their inner eye.

[sofa king]

8. Or a new kind of celebrity, even.

One whose mind is beautiful enough for others to wish to see at work... and those whose minds are so different from our own that they simply don't see things the way others do.

[leveymg]

4. This means we may be only a few decades away from Phillip K Dick's nightmare

of commerce in artificial inserted memory in Total Recall and Bladerunner. That's a scary, confusing thought - if indeed it's even my own. Maybe, I'm paying a high-interest loan rate for this "free" pleasurable experience at DU. ;-)

[CanisCrocinus]

5. He Who Shapes

Anyone who clicked on this topic would enjoy reading Roger Zelazny's novella "He Who Shapes" (expanded to book-length and published as "The Dream Master"). A great read on this very subject.

[DCBob]

6. if this for real then clearly there is potential for criminal investigations.

but might have the same restrictions for evidence as the lie detector.

[LiberalEsto]

7. Brainstorm, Natalie Wood's last movie

was about something very similar. It came out in 1983.

[ThoughtCriminal]

12. I really liked that movie

and was thinking about it after the recent death of Cliff Robertson.

[The Doctor.]

9. Reminds me of a device in a sci-fi story I was writing.

Very cool.

[adhd_what_huh]

10. Total Crap.....my thoughts are not molecules that can be measured...

[mike_c]

11. apparently they are....

Your protestations notwithstanding.