http://gizmodo.com/5843117/scientists-reconstruct-video-clips-from-brain-activity

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/

I was just reading Gizmodo and saw this article which I found incredibly interesting. I'm not going to claim to know how it works, but supposedly scientists have managed to recreate the videos that subjects have watched through their brain waves. I, like most people, have always wanted to watch my dreams, and this seems like the first step; not to mention all of the other possibilities technology like this brings up. Thoughts?

Looks fake.

I can't even believe this story. Its from a credible source and all but it just seems to unreal to be real.

I guess i can start filming those epic movies in my head then? Too bad i can't process sound.

This is fantastic... can we get video game development stations set up in our heads, now?

UC Berkley has far too much to lose to fake a discovery.

Assuming this is real technology and can be refined past the fuzzy point it's at now, I would really hope that it could be used like this. (Not sure how it'd work for games, though.)

Are they isolating the raw visual data in some area of the brain? Before it's interpreted?

Edit: I'm tempted to call shenanigans solely because they used the pink panther remake.

Anyone else notice that the people in the reconstructed video look different? Like, not just blurry but completely different. The second Steve Martin clip isn't wearing a hat and looks like he has a T-shirt on. The black kid with the stethoscope looks like a white woman with long hair, and the last woman almost looks like the black kid. It's sort of creepy hmy:

Yeah, I noticed that too. I wondered if the viewer had forgotten/not paid attention to the actual image, so their mind just filled it in with a "stock" person.

Ditto. It's like developing the ultimate weapon. There are good things and horribly bad things we could do with this technology (and knowing humans, we will not neglect doing the horrible things). Still amazing, regardless.

Can't wait for it to be used to convict people of thoughtcrime...

The same happens with pretty much every technology out there, unfortunately.

And yeah, this is simultaneously extremely terrifying and totally awesome.

Reading either article clearly states that they used 18 million seconds of random YouTube video to reconstruct the images obtained from the computer program that was monitoring the fMRI data. That's why the reconstructed video doesn't always match up with the video that the person was watching. Basically, given what input the computer was getting, it looked through those 18 million seconds of video and guessed at what the person was watching, as far as I understand it.

I hear Eurasia is at war with Eastasia.

Before the lobotomy is performed on me (no way am I going down like Winston, he was far too weak) I'll have a smug look on my face from knowing that whoever saw my thoughtcrime is probably receiving psychiatric help

Just wait until you guys see whats on my BVR...

If they ever refine this technology I hope they regulate it so they can't peek at your brain activity without consent. :ermm: