Is this real life 'Inception'? Scientists use unnerving trick to plant false experiences into people's brains
Is this real life 'Inception'?
Scientists use unnerving trick to plant false experiences into people's brains
·
Research looks at how to 'induce'
knowledge through the visual cortex
·
In new study, the group were able
to train volunteers into seeing colours
·
Participants thought they saw
colour red when looking at vertical stripes
·
This technique could be used for
education or therapeutic reasons
·
The idea
that people can interfere with others' thoughts and implant things in their
minds was made famous by the 2010 film 'Inception'.
But the
concept is not completely science fiction, according to a group of researchers
at Brown University.
The
scientists have discovered a way to implant associations in people's brains,
without the subjects being aware of it happening.
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With
volunteers in the scanner, the patterns of activity in two areas of the brain
were first measured when the subjects saw different combinations of coloured
backgrounds (red, green and grey) behind two different stripe orientations
(vertical and horizontal)
WHAT IS
THE TECHNIQUE?
The process is called Decoded Neurofeedback, or 'DecNef'.
The idea for neurofeedback technique grew out of research from the
1960s showing that a person could regulate his heart rate or temperature just
by thinking about it.
Because our brains regulate temperature and heart rate, the
researchers wanted to see if we could also regulate other aspects of brain
activity.
Working
with colleagues in Japan, scientists at Brown University have been studying how
a functional magnetic resonance machine (FMRI) can 'induce' knowledge in
someone through their visual cortex by sending signals that change their brain
activity pattern.
This
process is called Decoded Neurofeedback, or 'DecNef'.
In a
recent breakthrough, the group used a new technique to surreptitiously train a
small group of volunteers to associate vertical stripes with the colour red and
horizontal stripes with the colour green.
The
people taking part thought they were seeing the colour red when looking at
black and white stripes, and had no idea this was happening.
The
association was induced by specifically targeting two early visual areas of the
brain.
Named
'V1' and 'V2', the areas are the first parts of the cortex to process basic
visual information coming from the eyes.
But
scientists had not previously seen associative learning happening in these
areas.
HOW THE
STUDY WORKED
With volunteers in the scanner, the patterns of activity in two
areas of the brain were first measured when the subjects saw different
combinations of coloured backgrounds (red, green and grey) behind two different
stripe orientations (vertical and horizontal).
This data was used to encode a 'classifier' that could distinguish
between red and green - to recognise the brain activity the volunteers induced
in those areas in future experiments.
Over three days of training, looking at disks with vertical and
horizontal stripes. volunteers were asked to think of a variety of ways they
might use their brains to enlarge a disk they were looking at.
But in reality the disk only got larger, and the participants were
given a higher 'score', when the classifier saw signs they were thinking of the
colour red.
The 12 volunteers were really being trained so that after seeing
vertical stripes they would induce activity patterns in V1 and V2 similar to
the activity that had occurred when they actually saw red.
After
three days of training, participants were trained into seeing red when they saw
vertical stripes.
'This is
the first clear study that shows that V1 and V2 are capable of creating
associative learning,' said Professor Takeo Watanabe, corresponding author of
the paper published in the journal Current Biology.
The idea
for neurofeedback technique grew out of research from the 1960s showing that a
person could regulate his heart rate or temperature just by thinking about
it.
Because
our brains regulate temperature and heart rate, Professor Watanabe wanted to
see if we could regulate other aspects of brain activity.
'Participants
were not aware of the purpose of the experiment or what kind of activation they
learned to induce,' Professor Watanabe said.
After the
experiment, the researchers asked the subjects what they were thinking about
when they got high scores.
'I
imagined a gymnastics match in which I performed well,' 'I imagined a situation
where I behaved violently,' others reported.
The
participants were not hallucinating the color red, Professor Watanabe said.
Instead their experiences were more similar to synesthesia, a condition in
which people perceive coloors when they look at printed numbers and letters.
Associative
learning and memory, the idea that 'this goes with that', is pervasive in
the brain.
But it
was a novel finding of basic brain science to show that it can occur in early
visual areas, Professor Watanabe said.
Professor
Watanabe said he is eager to find out if scientists can use the study's
technique of training subjects with (unwitting) MRI-based feedback to create
associations in other parts of the brain for educational or therapeutic
reasons.
'Our
brain functions are mostly based on associative processing, so association is
extremely important,' Professor Watanabe said. 'Now we know that this
technology can be applied to induce associative learning.'
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