Slashdot Mirror
Future Actions Predicted From Brain Activity
An anonymous reader writes "Bringing the real world into the brain scanner, researchers say they can now determine the action a person was planning, mere moments before that action is actually executed. In the study at the University of Western Ontario, human subjects had their brain activity scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they performed one of three hand movements. By using the signals from many brain regions, the researchers could predict, better than chance, which of the actions the volunteer was merely intending to do, seconds later."
Does anyone else interpret "mere" moments as implying that a shorter amount of time is better? Wouldn't being able to detect an action *longer* before it actually happens be better?
Once again art wins the contest by default, when real life plagiarizes it (Minority Report).
If only they could have used this technology to predict them creating this technology.
This has been reported before, I forget what the research was, but "predicting mistakes before you make them" found that the decisions you make before proceeding against your better judgement (omg they found the little angel and devil shoulder imps via the MRI..) This is just the same research again, but focused on movements.
The logical outcome of this research is figuring out how to tap it for cybernetics.
Hilter used to claim this as well. BS Technology.
Anyone have a link to the actual study, so we can find out what "better than chance" really means? 40% accuracy? 35% accuracy? Either could be significantly better than chance (33%), but neither shows much promise on the "I'm going to read your mind" front.
Unrelated, but why did slashdot decide to change the UI again? It's even less responsive now than their last change!
http://communications.uwo.ca/western_news/stories/2011/June/brain_research_predicts_premeditated_actions.pdf
my bad. the above link is just a release by the center. Actual study is not freely available. Here is the abstract - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/26/9599.abstract
They should have done the ESP card test from Ghostbusters.
Yes, but now with the right equipment we can cheat at it!
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
This is far from predicting future actions. I, myself, know what I am going to do moments before I do it. That is because I can think faster than I can act.
It can only predict my actions before I do them, not before I think them. This isn't the start of pre-crime, because that would require planning out your actions before you do. This is not that, and it's not even a step towards that.
I have to admit I didn't know. I thought he was going to post about "thought crime."
"Do you know what that means? This damn thing doesn't work!"
Anyone have a link to the actual study, so we can find out what "better than chance" really means?
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/26/9599.full?sid=9fc54d71-af27-4f59-b121-747e942411a9
They predicted one of three hand movements and it wasn't Rock, Paper, Scissors? They missed a huge opportunity to upend the RPS wagering market
Yours is the minority report!
The team found that by using the signals from many brain regions, they could predict, better than chance, which of the actions the volunteer was merely intending to do, seconds later.
key word there is intend - sounds like they're able to detect/predict before a conscious decision was made.
key word there is intend - sounds like they're able to detect/predict before a conscious decision was made.
The key word is indeed "intend" -- though that implies a conscious decision was made which was then predicted.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Will never be the same.
Who says they didn' OUCH! Hey!
... better than chance is a pretty general science term that means "Yes, we can do it. Not perfectly, but better than chance."
In the world of science reporting, it means "Eh, not by accident, but not worth writing home about". If they could predict it at 95% accuracy, you bet they'd be reporting it. It's just the way science journalism works.
If you have no brain activity, you are unlikely to take actions in the future.
Someone tell the republicans.
I'm sure I saw in some BBC program (Horizon?) a claim that it was possible to use this technology to predict a person's action not only before they did it but before they even became *aware* of the decision they were going to make
Either bullshit or quite unsettling.
There is a middle ground in this case between "untrue" and "bad." I've seen the same studies, showing (theoretically) that what we're going to do is already decided before we actually carry out the action, but it doesn't necessarily negate the idea of freewill or anything like that. The mind is not a simple machine, it is incredibly complex and your consciousness only represents, and is only aware of, a fraction of all the activity going on. There are subconscious feelings you don't fully realize you have or don't realize how they will impact certain decisions, there are autonomous responses that will kick in before you get the chance to think about an action, there are trained reflexes that short-circuit the regular decision making process. At least one such study claims that many actions are started "automatically" but higher levels of consciousness then have the option to veto it before it's actually carried out. This is probably exactly how people can literally have second thoughts about actions (although for a lot of people there are unfortunate cases where the conscious mind is a little late and tries to veto the action after it's already being carried out.)
So no, neither our thoughts nor our actions are under 100% conscious control all the time, but that's not anything that anyone with even a basic understanding of human nature didn't know already.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I *am* a neuro-scientist, though I focus more on the visual areas at the back of the brain, rather than the planning area at the front.
This stuff is kinda shiny, but nothing all that new. We can already pick up the brain activity relating to motor actions, both with fMRI and the decidedly more portable eeg. Heck, we can pull this classification trick on the visual system and determine what people are seeing.
The real story here is not being able to determine what people are doing - or even that we can do so before they do it - but rather that we can identify which regions of the brain are involved in planning tasks.
Yes, this allows us neuroscientists to then go on to do more interesting things like design systems to control robotic limbs, but it also enables us to ask interesting questions such as how does experience/learning effect the behaviour of these bits of brain.
One end point of this (amongst others) is to figure out how the brain works enough that we can duplicate useful techniques for use with artificial intelligence.
try the d100
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
and all this while I didn't realize that my plans and contemplations were hidden from by brain.
That these signals exist in our brain is no marvel. It is obvious. The news coverage focuses on the wrong aspect of the research. The question is how well their technique works. A device to control a prosthesis better have very high accuracy.
.....enforce it. I mean liked who doesn't yet know politicians will lie? And lawyers... well them lawyer jokes are not just pulled out of the air....
So far, I haven't seen anyone mention one very useful application of said technology: Advanced input devices. Think about it. If a computer could predict your actions even a second before you do them, then the system can use this data to keep pace with your actions. Who needs a tablet interface, when one can draw on a piece of paper, and the desktop reacts accordingly? What's the point of a touchpad or mouse when one can just move a finger or two over the tabletop next to the computer? Any monitor can be used as a touchscreen, as there is no need for a sensitive layer.
The Penguin Producer
Pre-Crime begins...
Good. Prevention is better than cure.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Unrelated, but why did slashdot decide to change the UI again? It's even less responsive now than their last change!
I think they're trying to put into practice the programming philosophy of "if you take an infinite number of monkeys bashing at an infinite number of computer keyboards, eventually you will produce a Hello World program with a nice bevelled grey box round it."
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'll be interested when they can determine between 5 possible outcomes, so I can beat Sheldon.
What an article Can't wait until they actually start predicting when people are going to commit a crime before someone gets robbed or killed. http://www.bbcleaningservice.com/ [bbcleaningservice.com] [bbcleaningservice.com]
So, what they invented here is an extremely expensive way to cheat at Rock, Paper, Scissors?
Words, words, words