They can read your thoughts

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Interesting paper (not yet peer reviewed) on Non-invasive brainwave reading and language prediction using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings

They trained and tested their language decoder on brain responses while subjects listened to natural narrative stories. The given brain responses to new stories that were not used in training, the decoder successfully recovered the meaning of the stories. The same decoder also worked on brain responses while subjects imagined telling stories, even though the decoder was only trained on perceived speech data. They expect that training the decoder on some imagined speech data will further improve performance.




They also tested the decoder on brain responses while subjects watched silent movies, and found that the decoder accurately described many movie events;  suggesting the decoder can transfer to non-linguistic semantic tasks.

Excerpt from the paper:

To test if a decoder trained with a person’s cooperation can later be consciously resisted, subjects performed three covert cognitive tasks—calculation (“count by sevens”), semantic memory (“name and imagine animals”), and imagined speech (“tell a different story”)—while listening to segments from a narrative story. We found that performing the semantic memory task significantly lowered decoding performance relative to a passive listening baseline for each cortical network (q(FDR) < 0.05 across subjects, one-sided paired t-test), demonstrating that semantic decoding can be consciously resisted (Fig. 3f).

Requires a willing participant because the model has to be trained with their cooperation. Research today, METAverse tomorrow. Tinfoil is going to be a hot commodity. The project is supported by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.



Circa 1971:


This cat-torture experiment was funded by the nice folks at UCLA's dental school, SRI, the Office of Naval Research, CIBA Pharma, and other lovely institutions. They've come a long way...sigh.



Cats, monkeys, to planet of rats...


In a study published today in @Nature, scientists at Stanford led by Sergiu Paşca announce the first successful integration of human neural tissue into the brain circuitry of a rat...

Lab-Grown Human Cells Form Working Circuits in Rat Brains

...by transplanting human brainlike tissue into rats that are just days old, when their brains have not yet fully formed. The researchers show that human neurons and other brain cells can grow and integrate themselves into the rat’s brain, becoming part of the functional neural circuitry that processes sensations and controls aspects of behaviors.

Using this technique, scientists should be able to create new living models for a wide range of neurodevelopmental disorders, including at least some forms of autism spectrum disorder. The models would be just as practical for neuroscientific lab studies as current animal models are but would be better stand-ins for human disorders because they would consist of real human cells in functional neural circuits. They could be ideal targets for modern neuroscience tools that are too invasive to use in real human brains.
...
Even more surprising, the flow of neural signals could also run in the other direction and influence behavior. When the human neurons were stimulated with blue light (through a technique called optogenetics), it triggered a conditioned behavior in the rats that made them seek a reward by licking more often at a water bottle.
...
Because the human neurons matured so much within the rat brains, Paşca and his colleagues could see unusual differences in the development of brain organoids derived from people with a genetic disorder called Timothy syndrome, which often causes autism and epilepsy. In the rat brains, the transplanted human neurons carrying genes for Timothy syndrome grew abnormal dendritic branches that made unusual connections. Crucially, some of these atypical developments could only be seen in human neurons growing within the rat cortex, and not in organoid neurons in a dish.
...
The nature of the new work may raise questions about the welfare and ethical treatment of the rats. For that reason, Paşca and his colleagues have held active discussions with ethicists from the beginning. As in all experiments involving animals, there was a legal requirement that the rats be extensively monitored by lab technicians with the authority to stop the experiment at any time. But no differences were found in the rats with transplanted human brain organoids in an array of behavioral and cognitive tests.

Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist affiliated with Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics, said he doesn’t have any ethical concerns about the current experiments. Paşca’s team followed all the guidelines developed by the International Society for Stem Cell Research governing research with human brain organoids and the transfer of human cells into animals. “To me, the issue is really understanding: Where do you go from there?” he said.
...
Hyun is more concerned about other research teams that may now become interested in transplanting human brain organoids into species more similar to our own, such as nonhuman primates. “You would have to have a very intense conversation at the oversight level of why you’re justified in going to something more complex,” Hyun said.

[NightskyeB4Dawn]

Interesting paper (not yet peer reviewed) on Non-invasive brainwave reading and language prediction using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings

They trained and tested their language decoder on brain responses while subjects listened to natural narrative stories. The given brain responses to new stories that were not used in training, the decoder successfully recovered the meaning of the stories. The same decoder also worked on brain responses while subjects imagined telling stories, even though the decoder was only trained on perceived speech data. They expect that training the decoder on some imagined speech data will further improve performance.




They also tested the decoder on brain responses while subjects watched silent movies, and found that the decoder accurately described many movie events;  suggesting the decoder can transfer to non-linguistic semantic tasks.

Excerpt from the paper:

To test if a decoder trained with a person’s cooperation can later be consciously resisted, subjects performed three covert cognitive tasks—calculation (“count by sevens”), semantic memory (“name and imagine animals”), and imagined speech (“tell a different story”)—while listening to segments from a narrative story. We found that performing the semantic memory task significantly lowered decoding performance relative to a passive listening baseline for each cortical network (q(FDR) < 0.05 across subjects, one-sided paired t-test), demonstrating that semantic decoding can be consciously resisted (Fig. 3f).

Requires a willing participant because the model has to be trained with their cooperation. Research today, METAverse tomorrow. Tinfoil is going to be a hot commodity. The project is supported by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.



Circa 1971:


This cat-torture experiment was funded by the nice folks at UCLA's dental school, SRI, the Office of Naval Research, CIBA Pharma, and other lovely institutions. They've come a long way...sigh.



Cats, monkeys, to planet of rats...


In a study published today in @Nature, scientists at Stanford led by Sergiu Paşca announce the first successful integration of human neural tissue into the brain circuitry of a rat...

Lab-Grown Human Cells Form Working Circuits in Rat Brains

...by transplanting human brainlike tissue into rats that are just days old, when their brains have not yet fully formed. The researchers show that human neurons and other brain cells can grow and integrate themselves into the rat’s brain, becoming part of the functional neural circuitry that processes sensations and controls aspects of behaviors.

Using this technique, scientists should be able to create new living models for a wide range of neurodevelopmental disorders, including at least some forms of autism spectrum disorder. The models would be just as practical for neuroscientific lab studies as current animal models are but would be better stand-ins for human disorders because they would consist of real human cells in functional neural circuits. They could be ideal targets for modern neuroscience tools that are too invasive to use in real human brains.
...
Even more surprising, the flow of neural signals could also run in the other direction and influence behavior. When the human neurons were stimulated with blue light (through a technique called optogenetics), it triggered a conditioned behavior in the rats that made them seek a reward by licking more often at a water bottle.
...
Because the human neurons matured so much within the rat brains, Paşca and his colleagues could see unusual differences in the development of brain organoids derived from people with a genetic disorder called Timothy syndrome, which often causes autism and epilepsy. In the rat brains, the transplanted human neurons carrying genes for Timothy syndrome grew abnormal dendritic branches that made unusual connections. Crucially, some of these atypical developments could only be seen in human neurons growing within the rat cortex, and not in organoid neurons in a dish.
...
The nature of the new work may raise questions about the welfare and ethical treatment of the rats. For that reason, Paşca and his colleagues have held active discussions with ethicists from the beginning. As in all experiments involving animals, there was a legal requirement that the rats be extensively monitored by lab technicians with the authority to stop the experiment at any time. But no differences were found in the rats with transplanted human brain organoids in an array of behavioral and cognitive tests.

Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist affiliated with Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics, said he doesn’t have any ethical concerns about the current experiments. Paşca’s team followed all the guidelines developed by the International Society for Stem Cell Research governing research with human brain organoids and the transfer of human cells into animals. “To me, the issue is really understanding: Where do you go from there?” he said.
...
Hyun is more concerned about other research teams that may now become interested in transplanting human brain organoids into species more similar to our own, such as nonhuman primates. “You would have to have a very intense conversation at the oversight level of why you’re justified in going to something more complex,” Hyun said.

The issue I have is not them reading my lips or my mind.

The issue I have is that they ignore what they read.

[Finspiracy]

Oh Lord i wish they do not read my thoughts...

Personally, i don't care. But it would be a really pain in the... mind... for the reader.  

I watched a documentary about artificial intelligence earlier this week. They attached sensors to a dude's head. Showed him images to watch. And those sensors recreated the images. Not very accurately, i must say, but somewhat close. Then the man slept, with sensors still attached. The images were weird... I love this stuff! Good thread!