For the first time, scientists have established that memories are laid down in specific patterns in the hippocampus, the brain region that is crucial for navigation, memory recall and imagining future events. The research was published in the journal Current Biology.
Four volunteers navigated around a room in a computerised virtual reality game while the researchers examined their hippocampus with an fMRI scanner. The researchers had spent time with the subjects “training” the analytical software to recognise their spatial memories.
“Surprisingly, just by looking at the brain data we could predict exactly where they were in the virtual reality room,” said Eleanor Maguire, project leader.
“In other words we could ‘read’ their spacial memories.”
Fans of Farscape may recall the Aurora Chair; employed throughout the Peacekeeper military, it peels back the layers of the mind one by one, until all thoughts and memories are exposed and displayed on a screen attached to the chair. Take a look at the Aurora Chair in action in the video shown below.
(Video of the Aurora Chair)
Via FT; thanks to Moira for the tip and reference on this story.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 3/13/2009)
A System To Defeat AI Face Recognition
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.' - Neal Stephenson, 2019.
Smart TVs Are Listening!
'You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard...' - George Orwell, 1948.
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.
A System To Defeat AI Face Recognition
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
Smart TVs Are Listening!
'You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard...'