Mind Reading

This is quite remarkable. It hasn't to do with Vivian directly - yet. But it's the kind of thing that could forever change what follows. In late December, Japanese scientists reported that they had read their subjects' minds.

Brain activity imaging techniques and machine learning algorithms have been getting better all the time. In the spring of last year, scientists at Berkeley watched the brains of their subjects who in turn viewed several simple black-and-white pictures from a training set. Then the subjects were shown other similar pictures they had never seen before from a test set. By looking at their brain activity, the scientists were able to accurately pick what picture (from the test set) the subject was viewing nine out of ten times. Bloody amazing.

Then came the Japanese study. They first calibrated their programs and their subjects' brain activity using the same basic process of a training set. But they didn't need a test set. They showed their subjects anything and could reconstruct what their subjects were seeing. The images were very sophisticated by previous standards. Here they read what their subjects are reading:

Not 3D color moving images - but that seems within our grasp - in a few years or decades...? Vivian - imagine that. And if you imagine (or see or dream) anything else, one day someone will be able to view a movie of what's on your mind. Be amazed and be scared.