This new device can visualize your thoughts (sort of)
This new device can visualize your thoughts (sort of)
By Karen Turner June 29 at 11:20 AM
(Courtesy of the Journal of Neuroscience)
The idea of a device that can materialize one’s memories
out of thin air seems like it could only exist in science fiction. But in a new
study, researchers were able to pretty accurately sketch out the thoughts of
participants simply by scanning their brains. It’s helping scientists
understand how memory works in the human brain, and it may be a first step
toward the futuristic ability to read minds.
Researchers at the University of Oregon showed a group of
participants, all strapped into an MRI machine, a series of photos of human
faces. They followed the participants’ brain activity as they looked at each
image, mapping neural activity to a code of numbers that correspond to the
characteristics of each face. This part of the experiment accounted for the
machine-learning function, measuring how the brain registers the numbers
assigned with each new face.
Then, each participant, still in the MRI machine, was
shown a picture of a new face. Using what they had observed, researchers programmed
a computer to reconstruct the face based on the neural activity of each
participant. The result? The computer sketch bore a good resemblance to the new
image seen by the participant. Researchers determined the computer’s accuracy
by showing the original image and the computer sketch to a new group of
participants and asking them to compare the images, answering questions like,
“Is the face male or female?” or “Is the face’s skin light or dark?”
Participants’ answers were by and large the same for the two images. The
computer’s new sketch reflected the face processed in the earlier participant’s
brain.
Participants were then shown two images of faces at once
and told to pick one to picture in their minds. The images were removed, and
the computer program crawled their brain activity, attempting to re-create the
face in their memory. The resulting sketches were less accurate than the first
experiment, but researchers measured the pixel value of the re-creation versus
the original and found it to be accurate 54 percent of the time.
“It works better than chance, but just by a little bit,”
said Brice Kuhl, one of the researchers. “Our study provides a proof of concept
that patterns of brain activity can be translated into visualizations of
specific faces, but the accuracy of our method is not high enough that we can
have confidence in any particular visualization.”
Researchers Kuhl and Hongmi Lee said the study revealed
compelling information about how the brain processes memory.
“We know this brain region ‘lights up’ when people
remember something, but there has been a lot of debate about why it lights up,”
Kuhl said. “Our major finding was that patterns of activity within this brain
region carry information about what people are remembering.”
A deeper understanding of the brain’s relationship to
memory could be helpful to studying Alzheimer’s or other memory disorders down
the road.
But what about the mind-reading aspect, the idea that
this machine drew images from people’s memories? Kuhl and Lee are hesitant to
call their experiment true mind reading.
“Certainly, we think it is exciting to see things in
science now that used to be only in science fiction,” Kuhl said. “But we will
leave it to others to dream up ways in which these methods can be used for
other purposes.”
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