Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Extract Images Directly From The Human Brain
In his 1958 story No, No, Not Rogov!, sf writer Cordwainer Smith wrote about an espionage machine that would actually let you see what another person saw by probing their brain:
With infinitely delicate tuning he had succeeded one day in picking up in picking up the eyesight of their second chauffeur... and had managed to see through the other man's eyes as the other man, all unaware, washed their Zis limousine sixteen hundred meters away...
Is it possible to literally see the contents of another person's mind? Researchers at Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) in Kyoto have developed a technology to transmit images from the viewer's brain.
He had then turned away from the reception of pure thought to the reception of visual and auditory images. Where the nerve-ends reached the brain itself, he had managed over the years to distinguish whole packets of microphenomena, and on some of these he had managed to get a fix.
(Read more about Cordwainer Smith's espionage machine)
(fMRI reveals brain image contents directly)
Here's how the technique works:
ATR researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani and others on the team divided vision up into a grid of 100 squares, estimated the brightness of each square from brain activity patterns, and developed a method to reproduce this in black and white.At first, subjects in the study were shown 440 types of images with the squares having various levels of brightness, and changes in the blood flow in the visual cortex when they viewed each image were measured through a process called functional magnetic resonance imaging. This data was used to "train" a computer. Next, when the subjects were shown squares, x marks, letters of the alphabet and other pictures, the images were able to be reproduced near perfect on a computer screen, although they were not sharp. Six subjects took part in the experiment and the process was reportedly successful with all of them.
Take a look at these similar results.
(Brain image contents extracted using fMRI)
The results look a lot like those of a similar study done in 1999. Garett B. Stanley, Fei F. Li and Yang Dan literally jacked into the mind of a cat. Multiple cells in the LGN of anesthetized cats were recorded simultaneously with multielectrodes.
(From Cat Brain Video - bottom set)
Update 20-Apr-2020: Take a look at this preview of an amazing 21st century development from an early 20th century cartoon by Phil Nowlan and Dick Calkin.
(Hypnotelevisor helmet in use)
End update.
You probably don't need a mind-reading machine to know how amazed I am at this research. Read more about how scientists 'jacked into' the brain of a cat ten years ago. From Mainichi News via Pink Tentacle. Thanks to Misja van Laatum for suggesting this story.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 12/12/2008)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 3 )
Related News Stories - (" Medical ")
MIT Computerized Bionic Leg Is Part Of The User
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.' - Charles Recour, 1949.
Bone-Building Drug Evenity Approved
'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...' - Edmond Hamilton, 1932.
BrainBridge Concept Transplant Of Human Head Proposed
'Briquet’s head seemed to think that to find and attach a new body to her head was as easy as to fit and sew a new dress.' - Alexander Belaev (1925)
Natural Gait With Prosthetic Connected To Nervous System
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...' - Charles Recour, 1949.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large
The Shape of Things To Come
Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark
'I can see in the dark, Case.'
What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
