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Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking

neurospace writes "Caltech scientists have successfully decoded movement plans from the brains of awake humans. This work has direct application to the development of a neural prosthesis, a brain-machine interface that will give paralyzed people the ability to move and communicate simply using their thoughts. The lead scientist on this project will be interviewed on Sunday, March 20, on the SETI Institute's weekly radio show, 'Are We Alone?'"

52 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. Possible other uses by Bs15 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if this new science will be used to prove the guily or innocent in crimes?

    1. Re:Possible other uses by peculiarmethod · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think we can all agree that the legal system has lots of laws in the very gray category.. the very reason we have many court systems, as interpretation is a delicate subject requiring, excuse the phrase, "a village to raise a child (law)".

      This technology may be used to further the success rate.. but prosecution will always hold the risk of damning an innocent.

      --
      ** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
    2. Re:Possible other uses by ikkonoishi · · Score: 4, Funny

      Only if the victim is paralyzed and you use this to let him point out the suspect.

    3. Re:Possible other uses by Xerxes2695 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It already has (to some extent) http://www.brainwavescience.com/HomePage.php

    4. Re:Possible other uses by rkcallaghan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh dear please, no.

      Talk about a literal interpretation of "thoughtcrime"! I shudder to think of the outcomes if our very thoughts could be used against us. How many slashdotters have thought some nasty things about our current president?

      Besides, it says "what you are thinking" and not "anything you ever said, did, or thought."

      ~Rebecca

    5. Re:Possible other uses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Thougts deal with perception and interpretaton, not necessarily with fact. This means that some people can be very convinced of their own innocence or guilt, wile this not being the case. I forgot the psychological term for this.

      I think you can make brain-joysticks by sensing brain activity in parts of the brain, but to interpret the miniscule complex traffic and put it all together to make sense of it, would require devices that are as intelligent and complex as the human brain itself. So I find it highly unrealistic.

      The only way it could be used is a bit like lie detectors. When you're lying, you have physiological responses, pupils widen, breath increases, voice shakes, transpiration increases, blood pressure increases, etc. But unlike the US, here that can not be used as evidence, because it indicates fear, but that's not proof of guilt. As an innocent man in a chinese torture chamber, I'm sure I'll have much of the same signs. (Because the flawed digmatic theory is that "those who have done nothing wrong, have nothing to fear". It's how alot of ignorant people give up civil rights that protect privacy).

      They could scan the brain and measure brain activity in response to names and other things that will or will not sound familiar to you. They might be able to differentiate between a 'succcessful cache hit' or not.. in memory. But it remains human interpretation as to what you can conclude from this.

      Information retrieved in such fashion is by far not as accurate as let's say 'statistics', while even statistics (dealing with likelyhood/probability) on their own say nothing unless you attach the right conclusion to them. Reminds me of the bell curve: when the majority of the 'black' people scored lower at educational tests, the conclusion was that it meant they were less intelligent races, rather than consider the socio-economical (environmental) conditions for these. Here the statistical proof supported a completely incorrect conclusion. In the same way, fysiological changes may be a fact, but their interpretation would be highly questionable. I don't believe 'likelyhood' is good enough, .. it has to be 'beyond doubt'. Camera's, DNA, and digitally tracking are the more likely options. And unfortunately governments, in a need for control, will be willing to victimize 99.9% of the innocent civilians to such controlling measures and lack of freedoms, using the 0.01% as an excuse. It's happening as we speak. Fear threatens sense of safety and fuels need for control. So far, it's natural. But this control will can and will be abused for political and economic interests. That's pretty much a fact too. Power corrupts. As this info is made public, you'll be subjected to public (uneducated) judgement more and more, like looking for a job.
      An effort for more control, includes need for abstraction and simplification, a more black/white view. Being criminal or not becomes a binary rather than continuous scale of severity, zero tolerance, etc.

      So I think we have alot more to worry about right now (people not being able to get a job anymore because of a fairly minor incident 20 years ago.. since most employers who know about this, will choose to be certain and not take any risk of hiring you again.. thanks to services like www.ussearch.com), rather than worry about brainscans to prove guilt or innocence.

      Besides, I bet it doesn't work on the many braindead people I see roaming around ;-)

    6. Re:Possible other uses by Anonymous+Writer · · Score: 4, Informative

      I wonder if this new science will be used to prove the guily or innocent in crimes?

      TFA is about signals in the brain regarding physical movement. What does this have to do with proving innocence or guilt with crimes? "Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking" was just the title. It's not a story about scientists being able to peer into people's memories or complex thoughts.

    7. Re:Possible other uses by 80+85+83+83+89+33 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      sometimes when people are being confronted by an authority figure they feel like they have to be on the defensive, which inturn can be interpreted as acting as guilty.

      hell, half the time the psycho owner of the company i work at is so suspicious of her employees that we feel guilty even when we haven't done anything wrong, just because she acts like we did. then she thinks we are guilty because we are acting that way. catch-22.

      --
      i disable sigs
    8. Re:Possible other uses by oliverthered · · Score: 2, Interesting

      sometimes when people are being confronted by an authority figure they feel like they have to be on the defensive

      When was the last time a cop stopped you, gave you a bunch of flowers and told you you were a model citizen?

      Isn't it their job to make sure people are being as nice as possible to each other?

      --
      thank God the internet isn't a human right.
    9. Re:Possible other uses by vidnet · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Don't think about polar bears!

      See, now you can't avoid thinking about it. Just replace "polar bears" with "the body I buried in the yard" and you can see how problematic that can be.

    10. Re:Possible other uses by gvc · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sure they're reliable. They just aren't lie detectors. They're interrogation aids, just like bright lights, bamboo shoots, rubber hoses, racks, ...

  2. Language by lachlan76 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Good as this is, what I'm really waiting for is a way to tap into the language center. Imagine: an interface which can work, regardless of the language spoken by the person. No more need for translation, everything could be held in a form identified directly by the brain.

    But I doubt this will happen in my lifetime.

    1. Re:Language by isorox · · Score: 3, Funny

      What's wrong with stickign a fish in your ear?

    2. Re:Language by Danger+Stevens · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem with that is our words for things may be confusing, but they are far more standardized than our thoughts for things.

      Words are the handles that we put on our reality. They are difficult to standardize often even within one language because of the variety of experiences that different speakers will have associated with each word.

      In computer terms it's like this:
      A Mac, a PC, and a Linux box are all using the same HTTP protocol to access websites. They have identical interactions with the exception of the User-Agent header. This is like people using words.
      If we were to plug directly into a person's brain in order to attempt to translate the meanings behind words it would be like removing the abstraction layer of a standardized http protocol and looking at the innards of each computer system. As each computer handles internal communication in wildly differing manners it would be much harder to understand what these computers were trying to do than if we experienced them only through their web browser.

      So a person using words is not unlike a wrapper or abstraction layer - it makes meaning MORE accessible, not less. Universal translators will be impossible until we have properly mapped all the different meanings in all the different brains.

      For more info, I recommend The Language War by Robin Tolmach Lakoff

      --
      World Changing - News for Humans, Stuff about our planet
    3. Re:Language by Escherial · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Mod parent up; I totally agree with this. Too often people try to get at the "pure" intention behind language, without realizing that language formalizes and refines abstract thought, similar to how mathematics and physics formalize and refine intuitive, but sometimes faulty concepts about how numbers and objects work.

    4. Re:Language by lachlan76 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well personally I'd rather the US have a president who isn't going to "liberate" the entire world.

      But maybe that's because i'm in another country.

  3. Should be interesting... by nbharatvarma · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If we could find the mechanical outcome of what we think when we listen to music.

    --
    ... and I shall strike upon thee with great vegeance, furious anger and a slightly positive karma.
    1. Re:Should be interesting... by FleaPlus · · Score: 4, Informative

      If we could find the mechanical outcome of what we think when we listen to music.

      There was actually Nature paper a few days ago about that very topic:

      Musical imagery: Sound of silence activates auditory cortex

      Auditory imagery occurs when one mentally rehearses telephone numbers or has a song 'on the brain' -- it is the subjective experience of hearing in the absence of auditory stimulation, and is useful for investigating aspects of human cognition1. Here we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify and characterize the neural substrates that support unprompted auditory imagery and find that auditory and visual imagery seem to obey similar basic neural principles.


      Here's a popular press article.

      "We played music in the scanner (FMRI) and then we hit a virtual "mute' button," said David Kraemer, a graduate student in Dartmouth's Psychological and Brain Sciences Department and author of the study, published recently in the journal Nature.

      With familiar songs, "we found that people couldn't help continuing the song in their heads, and when they did this, the auditory cortex remained active even though the music had stopped," Kraemer said.

      The researchers said the findings extend previous research that showed sensory-specific memories are stored in the brain regions that first experienced those events.

      "It's fascinating that although the ear isn't actually hearing the song, the brain is perceptually hearing it," said co-author William Kelley, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences.

  4. Mandatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    We can rebuild him. We have the technology.

    We have the capability to make the world's first Bionic man.

    Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before.

    Better . . . stronger . . . faster.

    - Julio

  5. uh oh.. by Keruo · · Score: 2, Funny

    "two pennies of your thoughts"

    "humm"

    EWGAD *slap*

    please think of the humanity and patent this quick

    --
    There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
  6. Prosthetics are great but.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...giant robots are much cooler and also possible with this technology. Bring me my EVA, please.

  7. Sex over IP ? by shadowdata · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If thoughts can be decoded and translated into binary and transmitted across the net , can we have the real cybersex ????? :P

    --
    This is NOT a sig - billy
    1. Re:Sex over IP ? by tsioc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      that would include stimulating your brain, not just reading it... possibly more than just your brain

    2. Re:Sex over IP ? by iwan-nl · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Stimulation of other parts of the body is unnesessary if/when the signals this stimulation would trigger can be sent right into the brain. The brain would not know the difference between real stimulation and recorded or emulated signals.

      Sending data right into the brain could make matrix-like simulations possible. However, it will probably take a lot of time before we have reverse engineered all of the brain's data structures.

      --
      I'm trying to improve my English. Please correct me on any spelling/grammar errors in this post.
  8. It's not that hard by Scorillo47 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You have to detect the presence of a few general classes of thoughts: up/down. left-right. With only these two dimensions you can then do anything. But this is still far from being real "thought reading".

    --
    Don't try to use the force. Do or do not, there is no try.
    1. Re:It's not that hard by peculiarmethod · · Score: 4, Funny

      But this is still far from being real "thought reading".

      I knew you would say that.

      --
      ** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
    2. Re:It's not that hard by ikkonoishi · · Score: 4, Funny

      I knew you would think that you knew he would say that.

      Also your obsession with small dogs in raincoats is getting out of hand.

  9. There's DRM in my DNA by datafr0g · · Score: 2, Funny

    Scientists may record what I am thinking, but it won't be free, and they can only pass it on to a maximum of 3 other scientists.
    However the effort required to sign up for these DRM'ed thoughts involves signing up to all sorts of "special deals", hurdles, traps - god forbid anyone actually read the license.
    The quality of these DRM'ed thoughts may also be substandard.... but hey, at least those drunk ramblings will be legit!

    --
    "Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
  10. Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking by ikkonoishi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In a word.
    Porn.

  11. Look out! by dauthur · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh shyte, here comes the return of the tin-hat men!

  12. revolution by tsioc · · Score: 5, Funny

    is this nintendo's "revolution"? doubt it but this open up many possibilities I would be afraid to use it for driving... I see someone attractive walking on the side of the road and the car turns towards her and runs her over! would be useful for entertainment though, in addition to helping people with physical disabilities of course...

  13. I'm thinking this... by imess · · Score: 5, Funny
  14. Re:beyond subliminal , now brain implants coming by bersl2 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I think he ran out of tin foil and is beginning to panic.

  15. The REAL question we're all asking... by Jace+of+Fuse! · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is all great, but the REAL question we are all asking: Do Tinfoil Hats block this thing?

    --

    "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

    Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
  16. Actual research paper by FleaPlus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's a link to the actual research paper (and abstract) describing the work:

    Rizzuto, DS, Mamelak, AN, Sutherling, WW, Fineman, I and Andersen, RA (2005) Spatial selectivity in human ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. In press at Nature Neuroscience.

    The functional organization of lateral prefrontal cortex is not well understood, and there is debate as to whether the dorsal and ventral aspects mediate distinct spatial and non-spatial functions, respectively. We show for the first time that recordings from human ventrolateral prefrontal cortex show spatial selectivity, supporting the idea that ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is involved in spatial processing. Our results also indicate that prefrontal cortex may be a source of control signals for neuroprosthetic applications.


    For an overview of the neural prosthetics work in Richard Andersen's lab at Caltech, this presentation is handy.

  17. "What're you thinking?" by dannytaggart · · Score: 5, Funny

    Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking

    They have suceeded where my girlfriend failed.

    --
    PimpMyMazda.com - Crazy mods to a 2002 Mazda Protege DX.
  18. The brain's adaptive powers... by zalas · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since the brain seems to adapt its structure to suit its environment (such as giving someone partial "vision" by stimulating their back with an array of little elements which correspond to the pixels on a camera), won't it mean that different people will have slightly different "wiring" for this to totally work on everyone? On the other hand, since the brain is somewhat adaptive, maybe you can get the brain to adapt or to learn to communicate with the target electrode areas...

  19. No more diplomacy by elgatozorbas · · Score: 4, Insightful
    But I doubt this will happen in my lifetime.

    I doubt I would like to see it in my lifetime.

    While language can be a barrier between people, it also allows for a suitable wording of your ideas, for diplomacy etc. If everyone could 'read' other's real ideas, people would not necessarily get along better...

  20. Question is... by Skal+Tura · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Will this be able to help in other kind of inabilities?

    I'm not sure about the english name, but i think it is in english also CP inability.

    My friend born so that he is inable to correctly move his legs & arms or anything at all, because his nervous system has sustained damage. I'm not sure about the specifics, because we don't talk about it for obvious reasons.

    The thing is, his mind is capable of moving correctly etc. but his nervous system & body isn't.
    Badly spasmic etc which makes it even harder.

    He needs someone to help him with everything, he can't even goto WC by himself.
    He is fortunate enough that his hands etc. work enough to use a computer, eat by himself, even write somehow.

    But would this help him to move to more independent life?
    Those of which know better, what you think?

  21. Don't know what to say by PhreakinPenguin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Rarely do I read about something that makes my jaw drop but this is one of them. All I can say is wow. I can't even imagine the possibilities that this could bring to disabled people. It's things like this that make me believe that anything is possible.

    --


    My sig of choice is Marlboro
  22. Ghost in the Shell by shaman0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if some far day it will end up in some way similar to Ghost in the Shell?

  23. My Idea... by polyp2000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have had an idea for years, Im not sure if it is possible technically or phsyically because I dont have a fantastic understanding of the human brain. I also have no idea whether anyone has thought of this before but here goes.

    One of the nice things about neural networks is that you dont neccesarily have to understand processes that occur during translation. I have often hypothesised that it might be possible to use the traits of a neural network to create an interface with the brain. Suppose there was a patient who had a degenerative eye condition that meant in 10yrs he or she would be completely blind. Forgetting the implications of connecting wetware to hardware for a moment- imagine if we could use a neural network to interface with the visual cortex of a patient , to learn to understand the electrical impulses on the patients visual cortex by way of matching them up with a camera mounted on the side of the head. Might it be possible for the patient to look at a tree using his real eye - the nueral network sees the tree with its camera and this way "Learns" what the patterns in the cortex represent.

    Something like this (if it is possible) would have some quite phenomenal implications - especially if it were possible to "playback" the patterns into the cortex from the camera.

    Would anyone who knows a bit more about these subjects care to discuss the possibilities of something like this?

    --
    Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
    1. Re:My Idea... by argent · · Score: 4, Interesting

      We already have a neural network that can be used to play back patterns into the visual cortex. It's called the visual cortex. It turns out there's a straightforward mapping from the visual field to parts of the visual cortex, and they've got quite useful results using both directly implanted electrodes and external stimulation. More amazingly, the brain can actually learn to "see" through completely different pathways. One experiment involved an aray of pins on the patient's back!

      Not that it's not an interesting idea, but vision is probably too easy a problem to be worthwhile. Hearing may actually be harder.

    2. Re:My Idea... by Ceriel+Nosforit · · Score: 2, Informative

      Hearing may actually be harder.

      Not at all: http://www.cochlear.com/
      My mother's got one. Speaking with her, you cannot tell.

      --
      All rites reversed 2010
  24. They all know what you think... by webgrappa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...in only 20 questions! :) http://www.20q.net/

  25. Homeland security and terrorism by Danathar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I bet the spooks over at homeland security are looking at this as a way to tell when somebody is lying (reliably).

  26. No suprises though by TractorBarry · · Score: 4, Funny

    > Scientists discover what you are thinking.

    Yup. Titties and beer. Alternatively beer and titties. It all depends on how long it's been since my last beer.

    Speaking of which it's fridge time ! No wait my g/f just went past. No she's going out, so it's definitely fridge time.

    --
    Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
  27. Time, July 1, 1974 by argent · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This article reminded me of something I stuck in my scrapbook back in high school. Amazingly enough, I was able to dig around and find it...

    Mind Reading Computer

    The experiment looks like some ingenious test of mental telepathy. Seated inside a small isolation booth with wires trailing from the helmet on her head, teh subject seems deep in concentration. She does not speek or move. Near by, a white-coated scientist intently watches a TV screen. Suddenly, a little white dot hovering in the center of the screen comes to life. It sweeps to te top of the screen, then it reverses itself and comes back down. After a pause, it veers to the right, stops, moves to the left, momentarily speeds up and finally halts - almost as if it were under the control of some external intelligence.

    The article goes on to describe the work of S.R.I. researcher Lawrence Pinneo in translating thoughts to action. Googling on his name in interesting.

    Did this take 30 years to get from Stanford to Caltech?

  28. Man gets bionic arm by GomezAdams · · Score: 2, Funny

    A man gets a bionic arm to replace the one he lost in an accident. He goes home with the instructions that he only has to think a command to the arm and it will perform. Later he has a call to nature. He goes into the bathroom and thinks, 'Arm, unzip my pants' and the arm does it. Then he thinks, 'Arm, take out my penis' and the arm does. Then he thinks, 'Arm, hold my penis while I pee' and the arm does that too. After he finishes he tries an experiment. 'Arm, stroke my penis' and the arm does. His unit swells and he thinks, 'Arm, jerk it off', and it did leaving him with a bloody stump.

    --
    Too lazy to create a sig...
  29. Now I can do 'dance dance revolution' by PsiPsiStar · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... without leaving my couch! Perfect!

    --

    ___
    It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
  30. Duh! by Rick.C · · Score: 2, Funny
    Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking

    Duh!

    I, like the rest of the male half of the populace, was thinking "sex".

    Now I'm thinking "Duh!", of course, but I was thinking "sex".

    Wait! OK, now I'm thinking "sex" again.

    --
    You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
    "Math in a song is good."-Linford
  31. You Are a Wonderful Person by ded_guy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Am I the only one who thinks this headline sounds like it came from The Onion?

    --
    In the future, all spacecraft will be made of cheese.