Japanese Scientists Reproduce Images Using Brain Scans
Scientists in Japan reported having reproduced images of what people see, which may help people with speech problems to communicate one day using only their mind.
"When we want to convey a message, we need to move our body, for example by speaking or by tapping a keyboard," said Yukiyasu Kamitani, the project’s head researcher from the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, a private institute based in Kyoto, Japan.
"But if we can get information directly from the brain, it will be possible to communicate directly by imagining what we want to say, without having to move," Kamitani added.
Reported in the journal Neuron, the finding may one day allow people who cannot speak to communicate with their minds. Also, it may help doctors and researchers studying mental disorders.
However, there is certain degree of privacy concerns, for instance, if researchers were able to read someone’s dreams.
When we see, light is converted into electric signals by the retina, at the back of the eye, then processed by the brain’s visual cortex.
Researchers from the five institutions involved in the research used a medical brain scanner to look at activity patterns in the visual cortex.
Kamitani’s team calibrated a computer program by scanning two volunteers staring at over 400 different still images in black, white and grey.
Then, the volunteers were shown different black-and-white geometric figures and letters of the alphabet.
"In this experiment, we reconstructed images of what people actually saw, but the brain’s visual cortex is said to be active even when just imagining something," Kamitani said.
The computer program successfully interpreted and produced blurred images of what the volunteers had seen.
"We want to know how our subjective experiences and dreams are expressed inside our brains," Kamitani said, adding that the study might lead to producing images of dreams, which raises privacy concerns.
"As accuracy rises, it is possible that information that people want to keep private could also be visualized while they are sleeping."
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