In a recent experiment from the Gallant Lab at UC Berkeley, scientists used brain imaging (fMRI) and computational models to decode and reconstruct people's dynamic visual experience (in this case, Hollywood movie trailers). This technology, however, can only reconstruct movie clips that people already viewed. However, the implication of this experiment is that this could be done with dreams and memories. Decoding brain signals generated by moving pictures is one of the major hurdles scientist had to overcome. The article claims practical applications such as incites into the brains of non-verbal patients. "Our natural visual experience is like watching a movie,” said Shinji Nishimoto, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral researcher in Gallant’s lab.
While this experiment is particularly related to neuroscience, the most interest aspects for me are the potential abilities to reconstruct dreams and memories. This would enable humans to overcome false memory, distortion, and other problems relating to memory. We could be able to replay memories on Youtube using our smartphones anywhere we are located. This experience would be similar to how we use computers and the internet as spaces that we write down our thoughts and experiences and access them when we forget. This would be especially helpful during trials when false memory may effect an outcome unjustly. The practical claims that the article makes with improvements in this technology are also interesting. Non-verbal patients would be able to speak through past memories and allow us to have a deeper understanding of situations that may have led up to their loss of speech. Since our natural experience is like watching a movie, these videos of memories and dreams could also teach us about how we perceive reality in new and different ways.
Many questions arise related back to our readings we have done so far such as if the family members were shown visual memories of their grandparent's Nazi experience, would they still deny their involvement? Would the false recollections of the O.J. Simpson trial and Challenger news happen if this technology was present? Would people still believe in their actual memories of events or would the visual memories become the sole memory?
Links:
Original article and video: http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/
Gallant Lab Site with FAQs: https://sites.google.com/site/gallantlabucb/publications/nishimoto-et-al-2011
Original Paper: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2811%2900937-7?script=true
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Interestingly enough this article, Matching Images of Brain Activity with Complex Thought, talks about how Princeton scientists worked from this experiment and tried to generate text instead of images. These scientists wanted to match the fMRI images with word categories related to the conceptual images presented to the patient. The fMRI images were used to determine shared brain activity between the different topics. For Princeton, language allowed a greater expression which would be difficult to produce with images.
"Imagine years from now being able to 'translate' brain activity into written output for people who are unable to communicate otherwise." The long-term goals are noble but the short-term is much more direct and highly attainable: observe "how ideas relate to one another and how they are engaged or activated." From the fMRI scans alone, the scientists could tell if the patient was thinking about an cow (animal) or a carrot (vegetable). It's amazing that by studying a visual component of the brain, it is also inevitably linked to the context generated by language and words.
http://www.neuroethics.upenn.edu/index.php/penn-neuroethics-briefing/brain-imaging
This article focuses on some of the issues surrounding brain imaging, the most pertinent of which, I believed, was privacy. The UC Berkeley researchers state that:
"Eventually, practical applications of the technology could include a better understanding of what goes on in the minds of people who cannot communicate verbally, such as stroke victims, coma patients and people with neurodegenerative diseases," all of these "patients" having extremely detrimental cognitive disorders. This raises ethical questions about consent, and also, if the researchers were actually able to enter into and translate these patients' thoughts and memories into images, seeing as the patients probably have less than average control of their cognitive functions, there is an issue of privacy here too, of the degenerate mind and body as a site of free-reign research.
Reading this article and searching for related subjects brought me to this item on JSTOR about visual memory and reading :
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1422983
Regarding similar subjects, I thought of my own reading experience and how, especially when the writing is particularly vivid and I get into a book, it is like a movie playing in my mind; this is emphasized further in the article I found. With the research and technologies considered in the original post, even books could, in theory, be brought to life through the individuals own perspective.
This article got me interested in the role that our brains play in our vision which eventually led me to this study which I found pretty intriguing:
http://www.ahealthymind.org/ans/library/RH%20dominance%20UCS%20neg%20affect%20Sato06.pdf
In this test, researchers tested the theory that the right hemisphere is dominant in the processing of unconscious negative emotions. Subjects were "shown" three groups of images in their right visual field or left visual field that displayed happy facial expressions, angry facial expressions, and plain grey images. They also showed subjects a mosaic mask and "nonsense target ideographs" (in this case Korean characters). The study proved that the unseen negative facial expression pictures would have a negative influence on how subjects perceived the "nonsense target ideographs" when shown to the left, but not the right, visual field.
The idea that the different sides of our visual fields process emotions unequally is really fascinating and brings up further questions. Is the right hemisphere dominant for conscious negative emotional processing as well? can the same hypothesis be applied to situations besides facial stimuli? What does this mean for us in everyday life and how does this affect our understanding of how we see?
The ability to transcribe brain activity by various forms of technologies has been around for a long time. I remember seeing an episode of ER ten years ago where a patient with ALS used a computer screen to communicate with his loved ones.
Similar to the memory recall article, these machines for those psychical communication disabled people (ie. high spinal cord injury, brain-stem stroke, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) work off electrodes given off by the electrical signals in the brain.
Reading these two articles, I wonder how much we will be able to communicate at great depth with those who lack psychical communication skills or other people in general.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=7452765&page=1
The idea of converting my dreams and internal imagery into a clip that can be digitalized and posted on web scares me; even though this technology may be able to benefit us in various ways. I began to look into the issues that may arise in brain imaging and it seems like this technology may raise quite a few social, ethical and legal issues.
http://www.neuromedia.eu/NewsData.aspx?IdNews=392&ViewType=Actual&IdType=261
http://www.christofflab.ca/pdfs/2009/01/brewer-et-al-1998.pdf
In this study, a group of researchers used brain imaging (fMRI) to attempt to identify the specific brain activations that related to visual experiences that were later well remembered, remembered less well, or completely forgotten.
This was different to the article that was posted, which dealt with moving visuals, in that still images were used. The research indicated that the degree of activation in various parts of the brain can measure how well a particular visual experience is encoded and can probably predict how well it will be remembered.
The use of modern technology in research on memory seems to have the unlimited possibility of allowing us to gain a deeper understanding of memory.
In answering the question of "will the video generated by this device replace the original memory," I looked to the article "Influences of Emotion on Context Memory while Viewing Film Clips." What I found most interesting about this article is the profound influence emotions have on each memory and the way in which we store these. In the instance of graphically recreated memories, it would appear as though the memory may indeed be replaced with this new visual representation, with the only difference being that emotionally weighted images, specifics of the video, will retain their original detail. This seems to insinuate that memory then is closely tied to the emotional receptors in the brain, they they work side by side to recreate these images. I wonder, then, if there will soon be the ability to somehow display the emotion attached to the video reel inside our heads. Who knows?
About the quote from the article posted "matching images of brain activity with complex thought"Botvinick said. " One can imagine doing this with any mental content that can be verbalized, not only about objects, but also about people, actions and abstract concepts and relationships. This study is a first step toward that more general goal." I think it is not an easy or maybe possible step to read and verbalize people's thoughts. because people think in different ways. even if we think about the simple questionaires about ourselves and how our mind work (such as visually mathematically literally etc) we can see that people's mind work differently, perceive differently thus reflect dfferently. one's brain activity towards an object might not be the same as another person with a different age, culture etc so i think this study might not gve actual results of brain activity unless it is tried on many different examples.
This interview with Elizabeth Loftus and William Calvin covers a variety of subjects related to memory and technology. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200103/memorys-future
They discuss ways the human brain is like a computer and ways it is not, how memories become distorted, and the increasing use of technology in psychological treatment and research. I think an interesting study for the Gallant Lab at UC Berkley or other researchers, would be to compare memory generated videos of a particular film clip from several later recall sessions. For example, researchers would use the technology to generate memory videos of the same film clip from test subjects a few minutes, days, weeks and months after the initial viewing. Would the memory generated videos change? How did they change? What can we learn about the nature of visual memory from these changes?
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