Neuroscientists At MIT Developing DNI

coolphysco1010 wrote to discuss the possible development of a direct neural interface, ala 'The Matrix', that could eventually allow for instant object recognition. From the article: "Now, neuroscientists in the McGovern Institute at MIT have been able to decipher a part of the code involved in recognizing visual objects. Practically speaking, computer algorithms used in artificial vision systems might benefit from mimicking these newly uncovered codes ... In a fraction of a second, visual input about an object runs from the retina through increasingly higher levels of the visual stream, continuously reformatting the information until it reaches the highest purely visual level, the inferotemporal (IT) cortex. The IT cortex identifies and categorizes the object and sends that information to other brain regions."

Comments

Matrix?

[Auckerman]

The article reads more like they are reverse engineering pattern recongition systems as the brain sees and interperates objects, which sounds closer to the movie Brainstorm.

Re:No 12 monkeys

[Timeburn]

IIRC, it was in Wired, circa about 1999 or 2000. The article covered research in South America (banned in the US), on a patient who had lost his vision, but whose optic nerve was intact. They interfaced directly into the nerve, stimulating it manually at first (This is when the seizure occurred).

The project was apparently quite successful, as the patient was able to move about the facility, pick up a phone from a desk, and even drive a car around the parking lot. Fairly low-res input, but enough to see shapes and movement.

Don't know what's happened with the project since, nor can I find the original article right at the moment, but it definately sounded promising.