Decoding the Mind's Eye

The dream-viewing machine is a device that has recurred in science fiction for decades. Our own dreams, our own thoughts are so real to us--as real or realer than images on a screen--that it makes perfect sense that we'd be able to project them somehow. We feel as though we should be able to attach some electrodes and plug them into the nearest display to convey what our third eye sees.

Of course, the brain is no camcorder, and we can't just extract the recordings of the mind's eye. At least, not yet. But scientists at UC Berkeley are getting awfully close.

Researchers have found a way to reconstruct images using an analysis of brain activity. They've found a way to pinpoint neurological patterns so precisely that they can almost tell what you're seeing by looking at what's going on in your skull. And the kicker? They've done it all using YouTube.

Seriously. That same revolutionary platform that allows you to watch Nyan Cat for ten continuous hours has now opened up a window into the mind. The scientists constructed an algorithm that associates certain types of imagery with certain patterns in the visual processing centers of the human brain. They gathered the data for this algorithm by spending hours inside an MRI watching YouTube videos, which sounds like it could be both fun and terrifying depending on what kind of personality you have. 

It makes sense intuitively that different types of images would elicit different brain responses. We're hard-wired to recognize and respond to faces, for example, so a video of a person talking would presumably create different patterns in the brain than a panoramic video of a landscape. But what's incredible is how accurate the images reconstructed from the algorithm are. Using the predictive algorithm developed from the MRI sessions, scientists created composite videos from YouTube's archives. And they resemble the original video in shape and movement pretty accurately. I mean, sure, they're still fuzzy, blobby composites--we're not onto drawing photographic details from brain patterns quite yet--but they're pretty impressive given that they're made from MRI scans and YouTube. 

Does this mean we're going to be able to see our memories and imagination on our TV screens someday? Well, it certainly looks like it might not be impossible. If further MRI data collection allows scientists to fill in those blurry recreations with more detail, we might just be on our way to a brain-scanner. It is nice to see someone using the inconceivably huge pile of public video on the internet as a data bank and not just a source of mindless entertainment for once. Hooray science!