Japanese scientists at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Labs have successfully built a machine that can read your mind - or at least getting images straight from your brain:
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 US 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.
Link | Article at Pink Tentacle - via Gizmodo
If psychic phenomena haven't been able to prove themselves so far...
I call shenanigans on this one anyways.
Even if this only turned out to a visual thing, it's pretty amazing. Find a way to create the brainwaves and maybe we'll all have extra artificial eyes to perceive the world through. How trippy would that be. To experience the body from one side of the room, but visually perceive it from the other side. Or have multiple sets of eyes that you can switch between in different fixed locations. Weiiirdd..
Obviously this could be used to better identify assailants from crimes, help people with psychiatric trauma, etc. But it could also be badly abused by interrogating authorities (Guantanamo Bay?).
I'd personally be interested in seeing how different people view the same things; everyone has a slightly different way of remembering events, features, etc. It could provide a lot of useful information on how we store data in our brains!
for determining what if anything a comatose patient or "vegetative"
individual is "thinking" in terms of generating images if they are able to do so.
We don't dream with images (and we don't think with words).
Dreams are encoded.
You think you dreamed about a very detailed tree.
What actually went on was: set: "tree"; value=detailed; resemblance: "tree from the front of my house when i had 8 years old"... And so on.
And even the coding is encoded. And each person has a series of layers of subtle unique encoding.
Sorry, but this will NEVER be possible.
Never say never, did the movie Fivel teach you nothing?
Dream reading may be millenia away but I can actually believe they found a way to decode some simple data from the visual cortex that is pre-conversion.
Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. -- William Dement
i volunteer
I'm leaning towards Jess's comment - current popular research notwithstanding.
Dreams into IMAGES = Never gonna happen. Not now, not ever.
I didn't say dream reading would be impossible. But the output would be very hard to understand (it would be a difficult art), and certainly NOT IMAGES! NEVER!!!
Linking brains together would be much easier than this nonsense.
PD: Notice how i spelled/spelt your nick right?
So, the point is taht it might be that they do not have access to thoughst, but just the images that the person looks at.
So do us a favor, before you say something is impossible do some research so you don't sound like a moron to those that actually know the field of study.
Other areas of the brain, even other areas of the visual cortex (such as those that process motion, color, and other aspects of an image), are not laid out as nicely, so dreams and other imagined imagery are safe from this technique. The real news seems to be that they were able to get enough of a signal difference via fMRI in order to decode V1 information.
Fox, Wisp isn't necessarily incorrect. We do use schemas for a lot of our cognition and attention. However, limiting it to just schemas is wrong considering he neglects the phonological loop, the visiospatial sketchpad, and the central executive as proposed by Baddeley.
fedorajones is on the right track. If you factor in individual differences (we all wire up slightly different), it is doubtful that you will have your thoughts or dreams read anytime soon.
As for the paper itself, I reserve comments until I actually read the paper.
there have been telepathic guided airplanes,cia programs,and brainwave frequency correlations to images in the early 1960's and prior.
hopefully,this device will work well also;but,it should be analyzed for image capture.the brainwaves do not generate images;but,instead,create waveforms that represent those images.
only the frontal lobe of the brain generates quasi-images.