Eventually, Even Dreams Can Be Viewed By Others
Times of India, December 12, 2008
Tokyo: 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.
Researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories succeeded in processing and displaying images directly from the human brain, they said in a study unveiled ahead of publication in the American magazine Neuron.
While the team for now has managed to reproduce only simple images from the brain, they said the technology could eventually be used to figure out dreams and other secrets inside people's minds.
“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.”
When people look at an object, the eye's retina recognises an image that is converted into electrical signals which go into the brain's visual cortex.
The team, led by chief researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani, succeeded in catching the signals and then reconstructing what people see.
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.
The team said that it first figured out people's individual brain patterns by showing them some 400 different still images.
Kamitani, lead researcher on the project, revealed that the team focused on the image recognition procedures in the retina of the human eye.
The researchers did so because the retina recognises an image while looking at an object, converts it into electrical signals, and then sends them into the brain's visual cortex. The purpose of the study was to probe how electrical signals are captured and reconstructed into images.
There is growing criticism of such devices in Europe and the United States, where academics say they could be used by investigating agencies to invade into someone's privacy.
(Compiled by: Dr. S.K.Verma, Editor)
