By Brandon Keim
(WIRED) -- Scientists are one step closer to knowing what you've seen by reading your mind.
Researchers used fMRI technology to try to pull images out of peoples' brains.
Having modeled how images are represented in the brain, the researchers translated recorded patterns of neural activity into pictures of what test subjects had seen.
Though practical applications are decades away, the research could someday lead to dream-readers and thought-controlled computers.
"It's what you would actually use if you were going to build a functional brain-reading device," said Jack Gallant, a University of California, Berkeley neuroscientist.
The research, led by Gallant and Berkeley postdoctoral researcher Thomas Naselaris, builds on earlier work in which they used neural patterns to identify pictures from within a limited set of options.
The current approach, described this week in Neuron, uses a more complete view of the brain's visual centers. Its results are closer to reconstruction than identification, which Gallant likened to "the magician's card trick where you pick a card from a deck, and he guesses which card you picked. The magician knows all the cards you could have seen."
In the latest study, "the card could be a photograph of anything in the universe. The magician has to figure it out without ever seeing it," said Gallant.
To construct their model, the researchers used an fMRI machine, which measures blood flow through the brain, to track neural activity in three people as they looked at pictures of everyday settings and objects.
As in the earlier study, they looked at parts of the brain linked to the shape of objects. Unlike before, they looked at regions whose activity correlates with general classifications, such as "buildings" or "small groups of people."
Once the model was calibrated, the test subjects looked at another set of pictures. After interpreting the resulting neural patterns, the researchers' program plucked corresponding pictures from a database of 6 million images.
Frank Tong, a Vanderbilt University neuroscientist who studies how thoughts are manifested in the brain, said the Neuron study wasn't quite a pure, draw-from-scratch reconstruction. But it was impressive nonetheless, especially for the detail it gathered from measurements that are still extremely coarse.
The researchers' fMRI readings bundled the output of millions of neurons into single output blocks. "At the finer level, there is a ton of information. We just don't have a way to tap into that without opening the skull and accessing it directly," said Tong.
Gallant hopes to develop methods of interpreting other types of brain activity measurement, such as optical laser scans or EEG readings.
He mentioned medical communication devices as a possible application, and computer programs for which visual thinking makes sense -- CAD-CAM or Photoshop, straight from the brain.
Such applications are decades away, but "you could use algorithms like this to decode other things than vision," said Gallant. "In theory, you could analyze internal speech. You could have someone talk to themselves, and have it come out in a machine."
The technology that is being prepared is straight out of the Book of Revelation! Why would anyone WANT to read your mind? Why would anyone WANT to SEE what your thinking? They want to control you maybe? They want to make sure your NOT thinking of something? God maybe, escape maybe? It's all abit much to me, the technology that is available now is mind blowing! And a definite sign of the times to come.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
The Love Of Many Will Grow Cold....
I thought this commentary by Bob Greene was perfectly stated, the Bible clearly speaks of this very thing happening! The Bible says that because the gross sin of humanity or "lawlessness, will abound or be so great, the love of many will grow cold"~basically become numb to the horrors of the world. We cant allow this to happen, these types of crimes need Christians praying, these horrific things happenening ahould call us into a attitude of prayer and supplication, please read his following commentary with that in mind..
Editor's note: CNN contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose new book is "Late Edition: A Love Story."
Bob Greene says society can't afford to become numb to the killing of entire families.
(CNN) -- There are some things we should never allow ourselves to get used to.
Yes, ours is a violent society. We take ghastly acts, and, almost out of exhausted resignation, we categorize them with convenient labels.
The mowing down of people walking along city streets? "Drive-by shootings," as if the carnage is part of some video game. The attacks, sometimes deadly, upon motorists on their way home? "Road rage," as if the brutal assaults are understandable, a traffic-related offense.
We probably shouldn't be blamed for at times letting all of this wash over us. There is only so much cruelty that can be absorbed before a kind of numbness sets in.
Yet there is a certain kind of crime we must not let ourselves become accustomed to. Because if we do, then we are truly adrift.
Twice during the last week, reports of such crimes have been presented to us.
In North Naples, Florida, a woman and her five children were found slain in their townhouse. The throats of Guerline Damas and her sons and daughters, their ages ranging from 11 months to 9 years, had been slashed. Damas' husband, Mesac Damas, faces six counts of first-degree murder.
A family, erased.
And just as that news was sinking in came the report from the tiny town of Beason, Illinois. Raymond Gee, 46, his wife, Ruth, 39, and three of their children were found dead in their home, all five the victims of blunt-force trauma. Logan County Sheriff Steven Nichols said it was "a brutal homicide against an entire family." Police were looking for the killer or killers.
The violent obliteration of families, either by members of those families or by outside intruders, crushes something elemental in us, something sacrosanct. The murder of families is like no other crime, because to carry out such an act speaks of -- there is no other proper phrase for it -- utter soullessness.
We have always been taught: When there is nothing else, there is family. When, in times of the deepest despair, there is no one to lean on, there is family. Family is -- or at least should be -- the synonym for safety. Life's protective barrier against the world's dangers.
For people in families with agonizing problems, this can be tested and can fail. And the concept of family has been trivialized by some who would use it to further their own ends: certain political operatives and entertainment conglomerates and marketing firms, who know that "family" is such an emotionally powerful word that it can be used to sell just about anything.
But the power of the word is based on something profound and real, which is why, when someone decides to eradicate entire families, the implications are not just Shakepearean in their force, but something approaching biblical. This is not supposed to happen. No one has the right.
And although it is not an everyday occurrence, it transpires enough that we begin to forget the names and places.
In Mason, Ohio, last year, police said that Michel Veillette stabbed his wife, Nadya, and then set fire to the family's home, killing their four children, Marguerite, Vincent, Jacob and Mia. Veillette hanged himself in a jail cell while awaiting trial. In a Towson, Maryland, hotel room in April, police said, William Parente killed his wife, Betty, and daughters Catherine and Stephanie, before taking his own life. In Columbia, Illinois, this year, Sheri Coleman and her children Garett and Gavin were found strangled in their home. Coleman's husband, Christopher, has been charged with first-degree murder.
It is not an American phenomenon. In the village of Kabulpura in India this month, seven members of a retired teacher's family were found strangled. A 19-year-old woman and her boyfriend have been arrested; police said that the dead included the young woman's parents and her brother.
In South Africa four years ago, 15 people died in a single weekend when men opened fire on their own family members. Liz Dooley, director of the Family Life Centre in Johannesburg, told the South African Press Association that news reports of such crimes were potentially dangerous, because if people read or hear about them, "it becomes catching."
Meaning: Others may copy the crimes and commit them against their own families. As if such a thought is even comprehensible.
Often a motive, after the fact, is ascribed: jealousy or money problems or alcohol or drugs. Sometimes robbery, with the families selected at random.
All of which, in a law-enforcement sense, may be factual.
But the willful and violent ending of a family's life must never become one more story at which we glance briefly and then turn the newspaper page or zap to another channel on the cable box or click to the next screen on our laptop.
For if we lose our capacity to be shattered when this happens, then we have lost a part of ourselves. Amen.
Editor's note: CNN contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose new book is "Late Edition: A Love Story."
Bob Greene says society can't afford to become numb to the killing of entire families.
(CNN) -- There are some things we should never allow ourselves to get used to.
Yes, ours is a violent society. We take ghastly acts, and, almost out of exhausted resignation, we categorize them with convenient labels.
The mowing down of people walking along city streets? "Drive-by shootings," as if the carnage is part of some video game. The attacks, sometimes deadly, upon motorists on their way home? "Road rage," as if the brutal assaults are understandable, a traffic-related offense.
We probably shouldn't be blamed for at times letting all of this wash over us. There is only so much cruelty that can be absorbed before a kind of numbness sets in.
Yet there is a certain kind of crime we must not let ourselves become accustomed to. Because if we do, then we are truly adrift.
Twice during the last week, reports of such crimes have been presented to us.
In North Naples, Florida, a woman and her five children were found slain in their townhouse. The throats of Guerline Damas and her sons and daughters, their ages ranging from 11 months to 9 years, had been slashed. Damas' husband, Mesac Damas, faces six counts of first-degree murder.
A family, erased.
And just as that news was sinking in came the report from the tiny town of Beason, Illinois. Raymond Gee, 46, his wife, Ruth, 39, and three of their children were found dead in their home, all five the victims of blunt-force trauma. Logan County Sheriff Steven Nichols said it was "a brutal homicide against an entire family." Police were looking for the killer or killers.
The violent obliteration of families, either by members of those families or by outside intruders, crushes something elemental in us, something sacrosanct. The murder of families is like no other crime, because to carry out such an act speaks of -- there is no other proper phrase for it -- utter soullessness.
We have always been taught: When there is nothing else, there is family. When, in times of the deepest despair, there is no one to lean on, there is family. Family is -- or at least should be -- the synonym for safety. Life's protective barrier against the world's dangers.
For people in families with agonizing problems, this can be tested and can fail. And the concept of family has been trivialized by some who would use it to further their own ends: certain political operatives and entertainment conglomerates and marketing firms, who know that "family" is such an emotionally powerful word that it can be used to sell just about anything.
But the power of the word is based on something profound and real, which is why, when someone decides to eradicate entire families, the implications are not just Shakepearean in their force, but something approaching biblical. This is not supposed to happen. No one has the right.
And although it is not an everyday occurrence, it transpires enough that we begin to forget the names and places.
In Mason, Ohio, last year, police said that Michel Veillette stabbed his wife, Nadya, and then set fire to the family's home, killing their four children, Marguerite, Vincent, Jacob and Mia. Veillette hanged himself in a jail cell while awaiting trial. In a Towson, Maryland, hotel room in April, police said, William Parente killed his wife, Betty, and daughters Catherine and Stephanie, before taking his own life. In Columbia, Illinois, this year, Sheri Coleman and her children Garett and Gavin were found strangled in their home. Coleman's husband, Christopher, has been charged with first-degree murder.
It is not an American phenomenon. In the village of Kabulpura in India this month, seven members of a retired teacher's family were found strangled. A 19-year-old woman and her boyfriend have been arrested; police said that the dead included the young woman's parents and her brother.
In South Africa four years ago, 15 people died in a single weekend when men opened fire on their own family members. Liz Dooley, director of the Family Life Centre in Johannesburg, told the South African Press Association that news reports of such crimes were potentially dangerous, because if people read or hear about them, "it becomes catching."
Meaning: Others may copy the crimes and commit them against their own families. As if such a thought is even comprehensible.
Often a motive, after the fact, is ascribed: jealousy or money problems or alcohol or drugs. Sometimes robbery, with the families selected at random.
All of which, in a law-enforcement sense, may be factual.
But the willful and violent ending of a family's life must never become one more story at which we glance briefly and then turn the newspaper page or zap to another channel on the cable box or click to the next screen on our laptop.
For if we lose our capacity to be shattered when this happens, then we have lost a part of ourselves. Amen.
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