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Computer Program Reconstructs Heard Words From Brain Scans
sciencehabit writes "In a new study, neuroscientists connected a network of electrodes to the hearing centers of 15 patients' brains and recorded the brain activity while they listened to words like 'jazz' or 'Waldo.' They saw that each word generated its own unique pattern in the brain. So they developed two different computer programs that could reconstruct the words a patient heard just by analyzing his or her brain activity. Reconstructions from the better of the two programs were good enough that the researchers could accurately decipher the mystery word 80% to 90% percent of the time. Because there's evidence that the words we hear and the words we recall or imagine trigger similar brain processes, the study suggests scientists may one day be able to tune in to the words you're thinking."
I'm pretty sure those tin foil hats don't actually work.
Did anybody else think that this sort of technology could really help with detecting lies?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
this is feb 1st, not april first
No?
Hopefully one can apply such technology to the politics soon. The program may be disoriented though, as when a word comes out from a politician mouth, the computer using the real true paths of the brain will understand the exact opposite of such word.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Holy crap, I was just watching The Black Hole this weekend and was thinking to myself "man, if there's one thing that this movie got COMPLETELY wrong it's ESP with a robot." Egg + my face.
The government has been reading the minds of citizens for years using covertly-implanted neurotechnology that they put in people's heads while they are knocked out. Remember all those "alien abduction" stories of the past 20-30 years?
The neurotech is like a hyper-advanced version of your iPhone. But it lets them send commands to your brain, including verbal thought, audio and video information and motor commands (involuntary movement). They can also decode what you are thinking in real-time.
This is already being dozen to at least thousands of citizens covertly without their knowledge or consent and constitutes a grave human rights violation on a mass scale. Most western governments are doing this and have been for years. For more info just google "synthetic telepathy" and "targeted individuals." Also check out this article:
http://www.karlaturner.org/when-everyone-has-a-brain-implant
At least we'd know that their brains heard and recognized the words.... whether or not they actually understood them is left for another system to determine.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Man... the 21st century is gonna be so cool!
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This is just another FMRI trick.
69 dude!
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
We are f*cked, seriously. If this kind of thing gets out and is exploited for commercial or polical purposes there will not be enough room in the "hills" for everyone. I think my next career will be in techological responsibility and law. I don't need to remind anyone here that the "man" has finally taken ownership of policing technology. The day I have feared for most of my career is finally here.
[ For you youngsters, see Firefox. ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"You must think in Russian, think in Russian"
Obligatory Firefox quote...
(Clint Eastwood had to think in Russian to fire weapons on his brain reading stolen Russian Fighter plane in "Firefox")
How long until it's accurate/reliable enough to start using it on terror suspects or any other detained individual? Me thinks it's already there based on the recordings. I can CLEARLY make out the words, "kill, satan, kill, kill, kill" in the recording. Oh, wait, that's my megadeath album...
If you threaten at my fingers with a sharp object I will move my hand away away. If you then ask a friend to threaten my fingers with various objects unseen to you and I suddenly move my hand you can reasonably guess which one was the sharp object. Just because they're using fancy equipment to look at brain activity and a bit of pattern recognition doesn't mean they're not making a simplistic observation on wild assumptions.
This isn't mind reading. Get over it.
This place is such a waste of internet space.
For this experiment, electrodes had to be *surgically implanted* into the test persons' skull. It's not like they remotely measured their electrical brain activity. So for now you can relax ...
Du kan glomma dina ensama stunder, du kan lita paa teknikens under - Wilmer X
Well Waldo was the nickname of one of my girlfriends who used to do kinky things to me. She didn't wear glasses or wear stripy sweaters either. So I wonder what they are actually scanning - the word sound or the memory of the word?
Maybe that'll account for those in the 10-20% range who don't register all to well.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
I'm surprised no one has yet to point out the best potential target of such a device: women. We don't even need to know what they're thinking. We simply can use the device as it is currently to see if what we say is what they hear.
Or we could demand brain scans of politicians to see what they really intend to do if elected. But I guess defeatism works too.
I'm sure Google Droids are working on this now, so they can deliver even MORE ads when you're even more susceptible to suggestion.
Oh, my, such innovation.
I seriously hope they develop the technology well enough to use it for Stephen Hawking while he's still with us. Imagine hearing him speak at the rate he thinks!
There's already technology that can read muscular results of subvocalization. EMGs with electrodes on skin around the vocal tract combined with software are able to decipher subvocalized ("thought") words with a high degree of accuracy as of at least 8 years ago.
Combine that with a UV laser of the sort that's being developed for a wireless taser application, you could ditch the wires in the future and just point a device at a person's throat area and read out their subvocalizations. Most people aren't even aware of them, especially masseter muscle activity (EMG study).
Did anybody else think that this sort of technology could really help with detecting lies?
No. I thought it would be misused {and/or fake), produce the wrong results and innocent people would pay for the crimes of others.
I also thought that it would become another tool of the burgeoning american police state and good for the Jail Industrial complex.
Remote version of this already exist, the entire thing is online. do some research morons.
Just for the record, Megadeath really doesn't write satanic music; though they're speed/death metal, Dave Mustang tends (mostly) to sing about the grim, self imposed fate of Mankind, and how stupid and evil we are to each other.
I think that you were thinking of Slayer...
Check your premises.
I remember, back during the tv series (non-animated), Robocop couldn't tell if a politician was lying because he was so used to never really telling the truth with the words he uses everyday. Hilarious excuse for why Murphy couldn't figure out what was going on.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
Wake me up when they get to 3D images.
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. Kadir beneath Mo Moteh!
You weren't modded down due to government censorship, you were modded down because you're bat-crap crazy.
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
...except brain surgery is not something you just "do" trivially. It's not like you just crack someone's skull, shove in an IC and battery, and then close it back up like nothing happened, with no damage (visible or neurological) and a short recovery period. Plus, if they did what we're currently able to do, which is pretty advanced I'll give you, it would take more $$$ than it would be worth, because even our advanced technologies are not nearly fine-grained enough to enable what you're talking about.
Because there's evidence that the words we hear and the words we recall or imagine trigger similar brain processes, the study suggests scientists may one day be able to tune in to the words you're thinking.
So the TSA should be rolling this out in 2-3 years whether it's ready or not. I can see it now. They'll be monitoring how peoples brain reacts while a recoding recites works like: "Bomb" "Ammonium nitrate" "Communist" Or the program states you are thinking the following: "5 oz. of toothpaste" "Bottled water" "Why are these fucking idiots doing this?" Clearly only a terrorist would think such things.
How long until it's accurate/reliable enough to start using it on terror suspects or any other detained individual?
For the purposes, accuracy and reliability are not necessary... Don't believe me? Just step in shoes of TSA (how many terrorists did they catch?) and/or those who created/filled Guantanamo Bay (they managed to do it without gizmos).
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
So one must have *individual* apriori scans for intelligible interpretation... meh.
Anyway, there's a difference between observing patterns in the way a person's neurons react to hearing a word and actually reading their thoughts. And I'm sure everyone fires different neurons when they hear the same thing... probably just as unique as a fingerprint.
Bonus points if you thought all four.
some monitoring program is going to be disgusted and offended one day.
This technology can be used to inhibit stuttering for persons with this disorder. You see, there's this phenomenon where stuttering can be inhibited if a stutterer speaks in approximate unison with other speakers (choral speech). A device was thus developed that attempts to mimic choral speech by echoing a stutterer's speech with a few milliseconds delay (delayed auditory feedback). It's effective, but not 100% effective since a stutter needs to overcome the initial stuttering block (i.e., he needs to speak so that it can be echoed later). With this technology, a device can simply read your mind so that you can speak in unison with the "mind reading device". I hope there would be a portable version of this soon.
They can scan in someone's brain and run a somewhat decent simulation of it on a computer....
just don't give one to the wife
I miss when tin foil hat jokes were hip.
"the study suggests scientists may one day be able to tune in to the words you're thinking."
too bad it's allready been done.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726466.000-hightech-necklace-can-speak-your-mind.html
Rocket Surgeon.
I think this'll be pretty cool in practice.
Imagine that; once this kind of system is in place, all I'd have to do to shut down my computer, for example, is to simply think of the word 'shutdo
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
> each word generated its own unique pattern in the brain
It would do, each is a different sound pattern.
The real question is: does each word generate the _same_ pattern in each person or is each word a brain pattern unique to each person.
If it is the latter then forget about monitoring random people.
If you are born completely deaf, what language do you think in?
Moore's law is not a law. Theory, yes; Predictable trend, certainly; Law, no.
I wonder if this will be considered in ACTA, since you might be able to reconstruct a song that you have heard this way.
eye for one do eye really want to use that meme everyone uses that damn meme eye for one welcome what brain something oh yeah baby why don't eye oh my god what is that alt eff four alt eff four ---- huh what the ---- was that beep there it is again neural interface help contents beep a beep indicates that the automatic profanity filter is currently enabled well we can't have that ---- file setting deselect automatic profanity filter apply fuck fuck fuck fuck okay much better now none of that goddam beeping okay so eye for one welcome our new our new our new eye wonder what the wife is making for dinner tonight tacos maybe or yakitori yakitori would be awesome but so would tacos maybe tako tacos eye wonder if wasbai and guacamole would go well together they are both green foods that are the same color should taste awesome together oh if only that were true well wasabi flavored kit cats are awesome so eye suppose if chocolate and wasabi can go together guacamole and wasabi probably could work something overlords something overlords oh why didn't eye see that earlier the integral on the left side of the integral represents the length of the curve between the origin and ex comma eff of ex while the right side is the distance between the origin and ex comma eff of ex so yeah the left side will always be greater that makes sense cool okay so overlords overlords eye for one welcome our new hands free slashdot user overlords yeah that sounds good stupid meme eye should post that anonymously though okay tab back over to slashdot so eye can
Surely this is only practical if everyone thinks the same thing when they hear the same word? If not, you'd need a mental dictionary for everyone before you can translate their thoughts. It'd be handy for people with motor neurone and the like, though.
My concern, long-term, is quite the contrary.
If this kind of interface works, we'll rapidly be obliged to think *everything* in words, painfully.
The situation will be back to the medieval times where reading meant reading aloud -indeed the writing was intended to be read aloud. There is a very interesting moment around that time when very scarce educated people start considering reading without talking, for instance, and this is documented (in writing! ;-) by witnesses from the time, who are baffled.
Liberating our reading from the necessity of reading aloud has been something extremely important for our thinking, an importance now almost forgotten.
if we switch to a world where every thought has to be almost vocalized to be interpreted by surrounding machinery, we'll lose our "fast reading" capacity, and I fear we may lose too the capacity to think fast. Really, back to early Middle Ages...
Herve S.
Just for the record, Megadeth's frontman is Dave Mustain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Mustaine
For all intensive purposes.
When I read brain scans I though of BOLD fMRI at first. This is a little misleading since the technique uses intracranial electrodes to obtain the signal. Nevertheless it is a great acchievement and a little scary.
"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should. "
Computer Program Reconstructs Heard Words From Brain Scans
Hard enough to parse visually, good luck using brain scans to figure that out. First 3 times I read that, I thought it was describing reconstructing computer programs using brain scans, and my first thought was, yeah, that'll work for COBOL or its modern equivalent java, now lets try something interesting like reading a Intercal programmers mind, or maybe an assembly language wizard, that'll probably crash it. What its actually discussing is not nearly as interesting.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
"the study suggests scientists may one day be able to tune in to the words you're thinking."
Yeah, if you let them implant thousands and thousands of electrodes inside your skull....
On SlashDot the dot must stand for reason because it gets slashed every time.
Right, because the proper response isn't to say that no one should have to suffer this kind of technology but to instead use it on the people we don't like. Except that, you know...those same people are the ones who would be in control of whether they had their brains scanned or not. I'm sure they'd all agree to that just like they'll agree on a bill in Congress to ban lobbyists. Right? And hey, that isn't hypocrisy either. How about we just not scan anyone's brain by force. I'm down for that. You want to know what I'm thinking? Tough shit. The mind is the most private of places and no one deserves to basically have it raped for information. You tell me that isn't basically mental rape. The mere thought of it seriously is creepy as fuck. Like not even funny kind of creepy. I'm just always happy when I see how ridiculously limited things like this are and I hope they can't grow much beyond that. I don't think any rational and logical person would want mind reading.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
Shaka, when the walls fell.
Perception is the thin dividing line between reality and fiction.
Not only can a brain-computer interface decode thought words...it can Tweet them! The Maya were right. This, truly, is the end of the world. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/braintweet/
GeekDad, TED speaker, Wipeout loser, author of Brain Trust
This is a current undetermined hypothesis. One evidence is how weak our memories are before were acquire language. My memories before age 3 are more flashes of sensation than systematic. Much of memory may require the scaffold of language.
Maybe words are localized to the parts of brain that control vocal muscles. (or gestures if you speak sign) Each word is a muscle pattern of how you speak it.
Or words are tied to the sensations and experiences they invoke. Or maybe words are combination of both muscle and sensual memory. This study could help reveal that.
Exceptional language like people who never speak but hear, or vice versa could have different brain patterns for words. Or they might have similar patterns because the brain recycles its architecture.
Parsing the dominate personality amid the cacophony of voices in my head.
So they claim with further development that they may be able to decipher what we are thinking.
That makes it sound like the Orwellian prophecy of a 'thought crime' may come true. It's bad enough that off hand comments made on facebook and other social media have landed people face to face with Homeland Security. Even spoken conversations on phones have landed people on the no fly list.
I can't want for passive scans of people's brains at bus stations, the mall, and schools. We can find out who is a true American, who is a better Christian and who lied on their resume. So you know who's been stealing pens off the boss's desk at work, and don't want to get involved, you can just think their name errantly and get fired for aiding and abetting. This is a whole can of worms that just does not need to be opened.
Michael Crichton, I think you new book just wrote itself.
Just think of what the ability to spy on internal dialogues within the brain might do in both civil and crimminal court cases. Talk about self incrimination! We could even know what lawyers are thinking in every conversation with clients. And think about salesmen if their internal dialogues could be studied for the last week or so before you say yes to their offer. I sold vacations at on epoint and when i buyer said yes we would scream dump two in the pit. the pit was the so-called luxury accomodations they were paying for but never getting.
Funny, maybe, but that's not interesting. If I had a YT link or something, maybe both, but really, that was just a dump.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
Tension, apprehension,
And dissension have begun.