• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Physorg.com headline: Dreams may no longer be secret

Kuko 4000

Graduate Poster
Kuko 4000
Joined
Mar 2, 2008
Messages
1,586
A Japanese research team has revealed it had created a technology that could eventually display on a computer screen what people have on their minds, such as dreams.

http://www.physorg.com/news148193433.html

"It was the first time in the world that it was possible to visualise what people see directly from the brain activity," the private institute said in a statement.

"By applying this technology, it may become possible to record and replay subjective images that people perceive like dreams."
Click to expand...


Unfortunately the details given of the experiment are scarce and ambiguous:

In their experiment, the researchers showed people the six letters in the word "neuron" and then succeeded in reconstructing the letters on a computer screen by measuring their brain activity.
Click to expand...


Seems like an awfully long way to dreams for me, but I hope I'm wrong...
 
Last edited:
This just in! I have implemented ground breaking research methods that may one day lead to cold fusion!






Now get me my other matchbook, I need to light the furnace.
 
I'm skeptical that there are specific layers of brain activity for specific letters and phrases that are universal for all people - this would have to be true for them to reconstruct anything as specific as the word "neuron" from brain activity. I'm also skeptical about the fact that they managed to "decode" the brain activity of people looking at still images.
 
At first glance, that sounds ridiculous.

It's been known for a long time that the *eyes* transmit data to the brain in a 2D-encoded way; there's some patch of cerebrum where, e.g., the upper left corner of the patch is getting data from the upper left corner of the retina, and so on, so that brain activity can be mapped to retinal activity.

But AFAIK this has nothing to do with dreams, or thoughts, or cognition, or memory. It has to do with the *retina*. If your retina is exposed to some light/dark patterns which spell out "NEURON", then sure, this patch of brain will click out some high/low activity pattern which also spells out "NEURON". This has no bearing whatsoever on what patterns emerge if you think about, visualize, dream, recall, etc., the word "NEURON" or a visual image thereof.
 
There's also the age-old problem: what do you see in your mind when I say the word "tree"?

Unless this program will be able to draw images on the screen that correspond exactly with the "visions" in peoples' imagination, it will only be giving a bare general idea of what people are actually thinking/dreaming.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom