Friday, September 23, 2011

Computers can see (almost) what you are thinking

Time Magazine



That's a video of the process up top. A test subject is undergoing an MRI while watching random video clips from Hollywood movies. On the left side, you see clips from what the subject viewed. On the right, you see the fMRI results of "quantitative modeling" using "a new motion-energy encoding model," essentially a matchup of brain activity with the viewed images. As you can see, at worst, it's capable of reconstructing what was viewed in terms of the video image's elemental geometry, e.g. broad shapes, lights and darks, etc. And at best, you can make out identifiable human forms and even vague facial features. (Interestingly, the human-related images seem the least abstruse, which, perhaps—wild speculation on my part here—says something about species-related bias in our recognition patterns.)

1 comment :

  1. I guess when they improve this, we'll be able to read minds.

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