Gondolat-azonosítás

The technology that is transforming what once was science fiction into just plain science is a specialized use of MRI scanning called "functional MRI," fMRI for short. It makes it possible to see what's going on inside the brain while people are thinking. "You know, every time I walk into that scanner room and I see the person's brain appear on the screen, when I see those patterns, it is just incredible, unthinkable," neuroscientist Marcel Just told Stahl. He calls it "thought identification." Whatever you want to call it, what Just and his colleague Tom Mitchell at Carnegie Mellon University have done is combine fMRI's ability to look at the brain in action with computer science's new power to sort through massive amounts of data. The goal: to see if they could identify exactly what happens in the brain when people think specific thoughts. They did an experiment where they asked subjects to think about ten objects - five of them tools like screwdriver and hammer, and five of them dwellings, like igloo and castle. They then recorded and analyzed the activity in the subjects' brains for each. "The computer found the place in the brain where that person was thinking 'screwdriver'?" Stahl asked. "Screwdriver isn't one place in the brain. It's many places in the brain. When you think of a screwdriver, you think about how you hold it, how you twist it, what it looks like, what you use it for," Just explained. He told Stahl each of those functions are in different places. When we think "screwdriver" or "igloo" for example, Just says neurons start firing at varying levels of intensity in different areas throughout the brain. "And we found that we could identify which object they were thinking about from their brain activation patterns," he said. "We're identifying the thought that's occurring. It's…incredible, just incredible," he added. "Are you saying that if you think of a hammer, that your brain is identical to my brain when I think of a hammer?" Stahl asked. "Not identical. We have idiosyncrasies. Maybe I've had a bad experience with a hammer and you haven't, but it's close enough to identify each other's thoughts. So, you know, that was never known before," Just explained.

IT3 komment:

A gondolatolvasásra még egyáltalán nem képesek a gépek, azonban az agyi tevékenység elemézése segítségével gondolatok azonosítása lassanként mindennapi rutinná válik. Ennek egyik módja MRI készülékek által az agyi tevékenységről nyújtott információk valósidejű statisztikai elemzése.

Forrás: CBS News