I'm going to be boring now
But I think they're talking bollocks. There's a huge leap of faith between the idea that you can read images from the visual cortex (which receives input directly from the retina) and the idea that imagined or dreamed images would be found there too. Nothing in the article suggested they had any proof of that (I haven't read the original paper, but...). More likely is that both visual images and imagined images both feed into the same place in the brain that comprises actual experience (Disclaimer: I'm not talking about a person in the brain). The brain is not a film screen.
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flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Wed 17 Dec 2008, 13:46,
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Hmph
Thanks for spoiling all the fun, dad
;)
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t0ria has forgotten how this all works, Wed 17 Dec 2008, 13:56,
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I'm going to be boring too and agree
(as I have a little bit of knowledge of this area) and repeat that 'the brain is not a film screen'!
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g0atchild Is back and has been away since, Wed 17 Dec 2008, 14:21,
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It is partly bollocks,
you'll have a very hard time reconstructing a complex scene, there aree simply too many possibilities *they acknowledge this in the paper(. They have managed to have very simple high contrast images constructed using voxel analysis. They use a ton of trials to do it and the amount of computation is quite mammoth, 'dream veiwing' is still, and probably alway will be, a pipe dream.
I always enjoy the news getting all imaginative with things thy don't really understand. Still, if this kind of technology is pushed, there are many possible uses for it. They already have 'brain controlled' wheelchairs for quadraplegics.
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Hellzapoppin, Wed 17 Dec 2008, 14:29,
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And actually
I'm not convinced that any 'leap of faith' is required for constructing an actual or imagined image using this technique. It would be a very interesting test to perform, and may involve different cortical areas but I can't think off hand why it should produce radically different results...
The images are extremely simple don't forget...
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Hellzapoppin, Wed 17 Dec 2008, 14:57,
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