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?'"

Comments

Language

[lachlan76]

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.

Re:Language

[Danger Stevens]

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

Should be interesting...

[nbharatvarma]

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

Re:Should be interesting...

[FleaPlus]

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.

Mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Sex over IP ?

[shadowdata]

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

Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking

[ikkonoishi]

In a word.
Porn.

revolution

[tsioc]

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...

Re:Possible other uses

[ikkonoishi]

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

Re:It's not that hard

[peculiarmethod]

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

I knew you would say that.

Re:Possible other uses

[rkcallaghan]

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

I'm thinking this...

[imess]

Re:It's not that hard

[ikkonoishi]

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.

The REAL question we're all asking...

[Jace of Fuse!]

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

Actual research paper

[FleaPlus]

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.

"What're you thinking?"

[dannytaggart]

Scientists Discover What You Are Thinking

They have suceeded where my girlfriend failed.

Re:Possible other uses

[Anonymous Writer]

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.

The brain's adaptive powers...

[zalas]

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...

No more diplomacy

[elgatozorbas]

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...

My Idea...

[polyp2000]

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?

Re:My Idea...

[argent]

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.

No suprises though

[TractorBarry]

> 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.