Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Decipher the Neural Code For Faces (scientificamerican.com)
New submitter akakaak writes: In a new paper published in Cell, researchers Le Chang and Doris Tsao claim to have uncovered "The Code for Facial Identity in the Primate Brain." They develop a model representing each face as a vector in a 50-dimensional "face-space," and show that the firing rate for each face-sensitive neuron represents the location along a single axis through this space. This allows them to accurately predict the appearance of a viewed face from the collective recorded activity of the neurons. This work is a major advance in the decoding of complex neural representations, and refutes exemplar-based models of face recognition. Further reading: Scientific American
"You're telling me, that a supermodel hit on you?" said George, shaking his head in disbelief,"How do you do that?"
"I didn't say she was a supermodel," said Jerry, he was holding a rolled up newspaper"But the option was certainly available to her."
"You're telling me that you were hit on by a woman who is so beautiful, she can choose whether or not she wants to be a supermodel or not!" cried out George,"Great, just great - why I can't have such luck is beyond me."
"Just listen," cried Jerry,"Is that so much to ask that you listen?"
"Oh, I can listen pal - I'm the king of the listeners. If they held a competition for best listener I wouldn't even enter - because I'm so assured of victory, it would ruin it for everyone else."
"You can sure talk for a listener."
"Haha, wiseguy."
The buzzer went of, Jerry walked over to it and held down the button,"Yeah?"
"It's me," came Elaine's voice.
"Come on up," he buzzed her in and opened the door.
"So anyway," he continued,"She walks up to me on the street and says to me 'Could you do me a favor and hold this paper for just a second, I'd be really grateful."
"Hang on," interrupted George,"How did she say 'really grateful'?"
"It was kind of a deep throaty 'promise of things to come' 'really grateful'"
"You're sure, she didn't have the flu?"
"No she didn't have the flu, now listen."
"I'm listening!"
"So I say 'no problem' and she walks inside the building, and I'm waiting, thinking about the great sex I could possibly be having......."
"Now see, I never do that, thinking about get's you all hyped up and you're bound to be disappointed in the end."
"What are you talking about? Fantasy doesn't build you up."
"It build's you up!"
"Just shut up and listen!" Jerry cried out.
"I'm listening!"
"So I'm waiting like five minutes......"
"Five minutes?"
"Five minutes, how long would you wait?"
"Well it depends on the person, but a woman as beautiful as that......at least till Christmas."
"Christmas?"
"Hey, for sex with a beautiful woman I think she at least deserves until Christmas."
"You're pathetic."
"Finish your story," said George,"I do have a date tonight you know."
"You love telling people that don't you?"
"You wanna tell the story or not?"
"Okay then, so I'm getting impatient and I look through the glass, and I see her hugging this guy!"
"What? she asked you to hold her paper, told you she'd be grateful and now she's hugging another guy?"
"Exactly, she's a temptress!" exclaimed Jerry,"I think she does it for thrills, leaves guy's hanging around outside in the cold for hours on end....."
"Five minutes."
"Okay, five minutes - hours on end, what's the difference?"
"I said that to my first girlfriend, believe me, it makes a difference."
"But can you believe it? She's in there hugging another guy."
"So what did you do?"
"I left."
"And the paper?"
Jerry smiled and held up the paper in his hand, "She'll have to buy a new paper for holding me up, my time is money!"
"What, a nickel a minute?"
"You're a real understanding guy you know that?"
Elaine stepped into the apartment, she slammed the door shut and stared at George and Jerry fiercely.
"Wow, aren't you a little Xena Warrior Princess here?" joked Jerry.
"You know, that Lucy Lawless is really attractive, I would like to go out with her," mused George.
"Are you kidding, you couldn't get Lucy Lawless," said Jerry.
"Why couldn't I get Lucy Lawless?"
"She's way too tall for you."
"You think?"
"I know."
Elaine shook her head and cried out,"Shut up, I have something to say here!"
"Tell George," said Jerry with a smile,"He's a great listener."
George smiled,"At least I don't steal papers from supermodels."
"
members of The Beatles or characters from The Simpsons activated separate neurons". i bet they did.
That is one weird face.
I'll bet this was some very smelly research!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Basically, the result from the paper show that from the data recorded from the primates' neurons, it is possible to recreate with high accuracy the image the monkeys saw.
The potential technology developed from this finding would astounding. For example, a scanner could be developed that could allow police to ask a victim to remember what the criminal looked like and produce a near photographic image of him.
Steal Your Face
if confirmed, this is the stuff nobel prize winners are made of
I wonder what the output looks like for those of us with face blindness? Do I have an accurate representation in my head and just fail to load it, or am I not saving them properly?
They should test it on the orange sphincter, he can't control his face at all, that's why he looks so stupid on all the photos.
OK they found like 100 neurons which encode faces. That doesn't make it clear at all how and where individual neuron states are stored in your (long term) memory. These neurons themselves obviously cannot do that.
Join facespace to view this comment.
"What you type is nonsense. What you read is nonsense. Yet, the most purest and honest data we can mine is biometrics." Not an actual quote, but it sounds like something Mark Z thinks in the back of his mind, all 200 neurons.
This appears to be a highly evolved perceptual representation of a core social competence. Even if it doesn't generalize, it's the biggest science result since the second LIGO detection.
It's already enough to further manipulate the masses, once exploited by the ad men, the plastic surgeons, and the mayfly scions of social media.
As a reliable bijection, research can already begin correlating the genomic racial space with 50-dimensional face space, no electrodes required. I'm betting Africa and Australia get all the love.
One caveat: how many more dimensions are required to represent male facial hair? Or is the beard recognizer a different neural subsystem altogether, half a neural highway closer to God?
This looks exactly like my n-dimensional "behavior-space" and the motivation vector that must be zeroed by a behavior or behaviors. This is the way to go.
E Proelio Veritas.
The last thing we need is something that can read your mind and steal your thoughts.