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Researchers Teach Subliminally; Matrix Learning One Step Closer
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time ever, scientists from Boston University and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan have managed to use functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI to decode the process of learning. As the research stands to date, it isn't capable of much. Rather than working with skills like juggling, the researchers relied on images so they could tie into the vision part of the brain, the part that they have managed to partially decode. Nevertheless, they demonstrated that information could be taught using neurofeedback techniques. And it was effective even when people didn't know they were learning."
Let us make fMRI machines less noisy and more portable.
I know kung fu.
This story really needs a link to an original paper.
The article claims that they recorded the brain patterns of jugglers imagining the act of juggling, and then had a non-juggler imagine doing the same thing and rewarded them if they matched those brain patterns, thereby teaching them how to juggle.
That's absurd on its face. But then the article tucks away the fact that what the study really only dealt with visual imagery. It used fMRI, which has been around for years and "decodes" the visual process of the brain. So what this study is really about is figuring out visual perceptual learning, not a physical skill like juggling. Using fMRI, they can "improve performance on visual tasks".
It says right in the article that they have yet to test if this process works with any other type of learning. It's more likely that it may have uses in rehabilitation and memory learning, or at least provide insight into those processes. There's no Matrix learning here.
seriously: my wife teaches high schoolers, she made a comment about The Matrix and got a whole room of stares in response. 1999 was 12 years ago...
No martial arts or helicopter flying downloads yet?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
But couldn't this be a terrible thing? And it was effective even when people didn't know they were learning. Translation: It will eventually fall into the hands of someone not-so-nice (politician, corporation, etc.), and suddenly we will "learn" that they are good, or we should buy their product, or elect them to be our leader, etc.
Mr. America walk on by your schools that do not teach Mr. America walk on by the minds that won't be reached
Bill?
That this hasn't already happened? They just have found neurological proof how it works, that is all.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I wonder if, with some more development, this could be used to learn foreign languages more easily, with the addition of audio.
There's a few languages I would love to learn, but I avoid it because I remember the horror that was French class in school.
Welcome to the new MRI taught army.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
The first thing I thought when I saw this wasn't the Matrix. It was Dollhouse. Followed by Chuck.
Its called the Fox News Network.....
So, did they also try a dead salmon?
Just think what this could mean: well-educated zombies!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
As the research stands to date, it isn't capable of much.
My, aren't we being blasé?
We have pictures of what it means to learn. ;-)
Not only are we looking into the brain, but we can distinguish actual learning from other processes.
If that doesn't blow your brain, you should reboot your brain.
(and, if it does blow your brain: take a picture!
PS: where I wrote "we", I meant "other, smarter people than me".
Has anyone tested the efficacy of tinfoil for countering this?
It's called television. People watch it day and night and it embeds all kinds of "knowledge" in their heads much of which is designed to mislead them but the come to believe it is true.
Its about core or prime knowledge.
I.e. you do not try to remember all possible mathematical equations or results for that would be impossible, instead your lean the abstract symbols, meanings and rules of use of mathematics, from there you can formulate and extrapolate any mathematical result. There is no spoon feeding here, you are the one who bends.
Of course this is all abstract, even the visual self image of you juggling, is only in your mind. Its like using a computer, you can know all there is to be found in text books about computers, but until you actually do, you won't really know. Its the feedback loop used in everything from learning to hitting a target with a guided missile. Where without the feedback loop, you are lost. Just as the United States has become lost due the shutdown of the founding father intended feedback loop, for the people by the people. A government lost and afraid even of its own people and now thinks only of their own security and war to prove themselves to only themselves, or so they imagine.
Knowledge without proper feedback in use is dangerous. Knowledge without love is empty .
http://abstract-beliefs.blogspot.com/2011/12/abstraction-physics-non-fiction-matrix.html
Sleeplearning.
Or maybe Matrix-style "upload kung-fu" in 10 seconds?
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I know kung-fu!
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Two weiners, because she knows I love double penetration.
It's called television and it's been programming people for decades.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
All of it. Math is a lot more useful in life than kung-fu.
It might be spam, but I understood more of it than the GP :/
Every fMRI story I read is summarized basically by "Guy 1 puts Guy 2 in fMRI and now ALL THE SECRETS OF THE BRAIN HAVE BEEN REVEALED AND WE CAN CONTROL LAZERS WITH OUR MIND".
That would be like saying "I looked in a telescope and NOW I AM EMPEROR OF SPACE"
fMRI is a painfully inexact technique, and sample sizes for fMRI studies are generally very small (either very few subjects or few trials compared to a non-MRI study), because of the expense of MRI time and the difficulty in finding subjects who will actually do what you tell them to do (think about this, concentrate on that, for an hour, in an MRI, without moving at all). Add onto that the incredibly poor spatial and temporal resolution (relative to the speed and scale of the brain), the incredible noisiness of the results, the fact that fMRI measures blood flow (NOT neural activity, although the two are certainly closely related).
A good analogy might be looking at a CPU with an infrared webcam and trying to figure out how it works. With very careful investigation you could certainly figure some stuff out, but it would be extremely difficult and slow, and you'd never be able to get beyond a certain level of detail.
Bottom line, while fMRI studies can be very useful, it takes lots of corroborating studies to make any firm statement about how the brain works, and you certainly would be hard pressed to say you 'decoded' anything about the brain in just one study.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
TL;DR
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!