Scientists reconstruct visual images from fMRI scans

[Jubal Early]

Nuts. The science itself sounds straigh forward, but the idea of reading someone's mind, in a way, sounds like something from Star Trek.

Scientists extract images directly from brain ::: Pink Tentacle

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.

AFP: Dreams may no longer be secret with Japan computer screen

A slightly more technical article.

EDIT: Can't link to m e t a filter because the m e t a... um, filter, lol. Anyways, where I read all this
m e t afilter.com/77353/Dreaming-is-a-private-thing

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warp the url with tinyurl.com

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*wrap, that is.

Dreaming is a private thing

[lightning_88]

Ive always thought this possible. I always thought the brain was like a hard drive, i wonder if they can advance that to see what say, the victim of a crime saw last?

[SamuraiMuhammed]

That's interesting, but don't different people think differently when they see certain objects? Like the "blood flow" would be different for seeing the letter A for two different people.

Why do they call it blood flow? Does the blood flow differently for each speck of information I see? As I read a sentence, is the blood flow in my brain rapidly changing direction at the speed of sound for every letter I cross?

[JSN]

Originally Posted by SamuraiMuhammed

That's interesting, but don't different people think differently when they see certain objects? Like the "blood flow" would be different for seeing the letter A for two different people.

Why do they call it blood flow? Does the blood flow differently for each speck of information I see? As I read a sentence, is the blood flow in my brain rapidly changing direction at the speed of sound for every letter I cross?

hard to tell because obviously the person who wrote the article has about zero understanding of the processes. your brain doesn't actually get nutrients from blood and in fact coming into contact with blood kills neural tissue. the chemicals are transferred to what is called cerebrospinal fluid. i am guessing that it might track some blood info as well as the the flow of certain hormones (by their magnetic imaging).

i have heard that the way we process things is somewhat akin to dna or machine language in that a very complex sequence of information is what triggers functions through relatively simple mechanisms with certain areas of the brain acting almost like shift keys.

as for how broadly this will apply to all people, i think that might be cleared up a little better from these experiments, although i'm sure neuroscientists have been studying this kind of thing for quite awhile- neural responses to various stimuli or even neutral images.

[chriskiss]

Originally Posted by SamuraiMuhammed

That's interesting, but don't different people think differently when they see certain objects? Like the "blood flow" would be different for seeing the letter A for two different people.

Why do they call it blood flow? Does the blood flow differently for each speck of information I see? As I read a sentence, is the blood flow in my brain rapidly changing direction at the speed of sound for every letter I cross?

You're right, everyone is different.

I don't pretend to understand the nitty gritty of the experiment but what they did was calibrate the machine to the person by getting them to look at the images for 12 seconds. After the machine was calibrated, they used it to look at different images and extrapolated from the calibration what the images would look like.

[NeuroNerd]

Originally Posted by SamuraiMuhammed

That's interesting, but don't different people think differently when they see certain objects? Like the "blood flow" would be different for seeing the letter A for two different people.

Why do they call it blood flow? Does the blood flow differently for each speck of information I see? As I read a sentence, is the blood flow in my brain rapidly changing direction at the speed of sound for every letter I cross?

Not really. If you see something and I see something the same areas of our brain are activated. Now how we "feel" about that object is a different story. From what I gather this is simply reproducing the object that we are thinking of. Artificial neural networks have been around for a quite some time, so this isn't too far of a leap in the sense of being able to reproduce how our brain makes images. What is fascinating is they are taking the "pixelization" from a certain brain and translating it to an image. Pretty neat.