G3N13
18-12-2008, 20:36
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16267-mindreading-software-could-record-your-dreams.html
Mind-reading' software could record your dreams
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...
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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.
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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".
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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.
This opens up possibilities, both dangerous - Big Brother...here we come! - and positive - Paraplegic or otherwise impaired patients being able to communicate with the outside world, just imagine the possibilities.
What do you think - Will the consequences be more positive or negative?
And what if we could reverse the process and feed images into brain itself?
Mind-reading' software could record your dreams
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...
..
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.
..
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".
..
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.
This opens up possibilities, both dangerous - Big Brother...here we come! - and positive - Paraplegic or otherwise impaired patients being able to communicate with the outside world, just imagine the possibilities.
What do you think - Will the consequences be more positive or negative?
And what if we could reverse the process and feed images into brain itself?