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Brain Imaging Reveals the Movies In Our Mind
wisebabo sends word that scientists from UC Berkeley have developed a method for scanning brain activity and then constructing video clips that represent what took place in a person's visual cortex (abstract). The technology is obviously quite limited, and "decades" away from any kind of sci-fi-esque thought reading, but it's impressive nonetheless. From the news release:
"[Subjects] watched two separate sets of Hollywood movie trailers, while fMRI was used to measure blood flow through the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information. On the computer, the brain was divided into small, three-dimensional cubes known as volumetric pixels, or 'voxels.' ... The brain activity recorded while subjects viewed the first set of clips was fed into a computer program that learned, second by second, to associate visual patterns in the movie with the corresponding brain activity. Brain activity evoked by the second set of clips was used to test the movie reconstruction algorithm. This was done by feeding 18 million seconds of random YouTube videos into the computer program so that it could predict the brain activity that each film clip would most likely evoke in each subject. Finally, the 100 clips that the computer program decided were most similar to the clip that the subject had probably seen were merged to produce a blurry yet continuous reconstruction of the original movie."
A couple seasons ago...
Onda Technology Institute
Does this mean I can record my dreams with Scarlett Johansen and Natalie Portman and view them at a later date? Or sell them on ebay?
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
There are no images in the mind. And no dogs in dog biscuits.
In the not to distant future we will have REAL thought police!
how quickly the MPAA sued the scientists for infringement of copyright
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
If I go watch a movie in the theater, then replay it to my friends later from my mind.. Would that be an illegal bootleg?
The video showing the original source and "output" is misleading.
The output is not synthesized directly from the fMRI data.
Rather, they take a bunch of samples from youtube and try to find a sample that generates the closest match the fMRI data.
Still impressively neat. It's just that they need to more explicitly explain what they're doing.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Starting at @0:06 and the words. Who the heck did they test this on and why do they apparently subtitle their thoughts?
@0:07, the words "Powershot" 2 secs in the bottom right.
"Lot4Life" in the elephants.
This is going to be a RTFA story it appears.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
I think I still got it somewhere at the bottom of a paper box...
I'm Not Antisocial, I'm Just Not User Friendly
they want to know when you'll be sending your royalty checks to them. Please make the check out to "All Your Thought Belong to Us"...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
I don't think anyone's going to MRI scan you without your knowledge any time soon.
that video validated every single nightmare i've ever had
so what now? What kind of an encrypted link of - image to brain (or sound or text to brain), are music and movie studios going to require government mandates? Because clearly, this shit is an unauthorized copy right there.
You can't handle the truth.
You'll be long dead by the time this technology becomes useful.
Summation 2
The fact that this is compiled from superimposed youtube clips in no way detracts from how absolutely awesome this is. If I were to tell you what I'm seeing, you would also compare my description with images that you know and imagine my vision via metaphors.... which, all things considered, works quite well in everyday life, by the way.
The future is a scary place. I'm reminded of the Dune universe, in which there are no computers because the populace rose up, overthrew their AI robot masters, and banned them. I wonder when that will happen on Earth. Anybody think some day we're not going to want this sort of technology around?
Conversely, I think this is an AWESOME development.
Just think. Once perfected this could be used in trials to definitively prove innocence or guilt. Massively cut back on the slimeball lawyers and jackasses lying in court to get off.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
the quality sucks. But honestly, BRAVO! Keep at it, guys!
On a whim I submitted this story (as you can see I'm the submittor) with the URL and a ONE WORD summary:
"Unbelievable"
The Slashdot editors either have a sense of humor and/or they don't mind doing some background research. They produced the paragraph long summary you see above and they went to the original article to clip out sone text and pictures.
So thanks! Do you get paid? :)
While increadibly cool, I see it leading to a lot of divorces...
Man: Honey, I had this hilarous dream last night, youv'e got to watch it! *plugs himself into the tv*
Woman: Why is your secretary wearing that skimpy dress in your dream?!?!?
Man: I.. uh.. that's a weird coicidence!
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
This is extremely impressive. That's better quality than I got on my first TV.
That's what they said about flying cars and look.... oh, wait
In other words, is the scanning that is done only valid
for the test subject, or can you now use that same data
to analyze another test subjects visual cortex ?
The summary strongly implies that they had to calibrate it for each of the three study participants.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
"ERROR DATABASE CONNECTION"
I was just thinking that.....amazing.
The summary strongly implies that they had to calibrate it for each of the three study participants.
Collectively or separately? :)
To
I see this more of an innovative VJ technique, which is cool indeed, rather than a reliable brain reader (or even vision center reader). Nevertheless, the output could be made more psychedelic, colorful and various. The idea and implementation is indeed very fun to us, IT people, because we usually love data crunching and we are enthusiastic about sci-fi, but, seriously... The title of the post is badly chosen.
This is fantastic, I hope they make further progress on this soon. This is big!
I didn't say get rid of lawyers, jut cut down on them. The fundamental job of a lawyer is to protect the persons right and ensure due process, it is NOT to get the guy off at all costs. Most lawyers have forgotten that.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
MAFIAA is pleased to announce that in their effort to combat piracy, lobotomy is now included in the list of remedies for three-strikes infraction. Naturally any attempt to recollect any part of any film is considered as one strike.
You could, at your option, pay a ... modest fine instead of receiving the lobotomy.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I imagine a lot of calibration would be needed - though with time that could be automated, unless it's some fundamental wiring difference in the way the data is transmitted.
Would be interesting to see them go the other direction and transmit images into the brain (who needs physical screens?), but that would likely be quite invasive.
Because it doesn't seem nearly as impressive. This is the same reason that fires are reported in acres rather than square miles, and wind chill or heat index are used to report weather extremes.
Hook me up to this and let my wife plug in a monitor whenever she's around. Then I won't ever have to answer, "What are you thinking?" again!!
She NEVER believes me when I give answers like, "If we give robots hands, will they pick their noses? And would running oil through air intake ducts do the same job as snot?"
Dammit! Those are LEGITIMATE engineering questions, and yet she thinks I'm just making things up. This could just save us the whole argument, and after a while she would just give up and quit asking the stupid question...unless, she had some useful contributions to designing a proper self-cleaning air ingestion system.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Just think. Once perfected this could be used in trials to definitively prove innocence or guilt.
They probably said that about polygraphs and DNA evidence too, and that hasn't worked out so well to be honest.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Others have already mapped vision to pixels years ago. This variation has more to do with pattern association than biology, and it's not even particularly interesting. Someone just wants more funding for their research.
Polygraphs can be tricked, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with DNA evidence unless it was contaminated.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
After the police get tired of reading peoples minds to match their thoughts to the crime, they will recycle old criminals by inserting the memory of the crime into their heads so they always get a guilty plea.
DNA is only really evidence of a persons presence during some huge window of time (even w/o contamination)...
Thus, for many crimes, DNA is merely circumstantial evidence, but somehow hollywood (professional expert witnesses), have convinced many lay-people that DNA=guilty. DNA as a general rule doesn't say who did what crime or if that person was even present when the crime was committed.
That might be your lawyer's job, but my lawyer's job is to get me off at all costs.
However, I have to tell you, I don't think your lawyer is very good then.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Did they ask YouTube for the rights to do this? Oopsie! Google pwnZ the concept now!
Depends on the evidence. If you find semen on a dead woman, or skin cells under her fingernails and DNA match it, then its pretty convincing that the accused just didn't walk by her at some point at McDonalds. But yes, you have to combine the DNA match with other evidence to realistically conclude guilt.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
That might be your lawyer's job, but my lawyer's job is to get me off at all costs.
No, that is exactly my point - the lawyer is not supposed to get someone off at all costs. It's this attitude that results in paid witnesses lying on the bench, ridiculous arguments that just confuse juries, illegal destruction of evidence, an just all around perjury. It's there actions that have resulted in the justice system going to complete shit.
Justice *should* be the search for the truth, and protection of rights, nothing more.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Or unless the statistical interpretation is flawed, which is easily done (especially when none of the lawyers or the judge understand Bayes' theorem).
Er, this technique records directly from a person's visual cortex, it doesn't replay memories.
And even if it did, it's been amply demonstrated that for many of us our memories aren't nearly as accurate or incorruptible as we like to believe.
On the other hand, if we gene-modded humanity so we all had perfect recall, and developed the parallel of this technique for memory, and had multiple independent witnesses, then we might have something the courts could consider "definitively" reliable. Maybe.
I suspect sousveillance and surveillance technologies will cascade into near-ubiquity first, anyway. "Google, show me last night's fire." "There are eleven thousand, four hundred, sixty-three camera angles available. Do you feel lucky?"
That would be wild to record someone watching Brainstorm, especially if they died.
Your statements are incorrect and are based on false assumptions of DNA matching.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.