Physorg.com headline: Dreams may no longer be secret

[Kuko 4000]

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."


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.



Seems like an awfully long way to dreams for me, but I hope I'm wrong...

[Soapy Sam]

I hope you're right!

[Kuko 4000]

I hope you're right!


You dirty old man.

[Kuko 4000]

Here's the abstract: http://tinyurl.com/5oh64n

Anyone have the access to the PDF?

[Kuko 4000]

Anyone have the access to the PDF?


Got it, if anyone is interested, you can get it here: http://uploading.com/files/DYB9I37X/sdarticle.pdf.html

[quixotecoyote]

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.

[Harpyja]

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.

[SteveGrenard]

The Telegraph co.uk also had an article on this research located here:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ATR+Computational+Neuroscience+Labs&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=


It may also be worth visiting Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR) Institute’s
Website located at:

http://www.cns.atr.jp/


English (subsite) versions are available such as:

http://www.cns.atr.jp/dcn/

[ben m]

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.

[Tiktaalik]

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.