Tuesday, 16 May 2017

Neural network learns to reproduce what your brain sees

quote [ Scientists dream of recreating mental images through brain scans, but current techniques produce results that are... fuzzy, to put it mildly. A trio of Chinese researchers might just solve that. They've developed neural network algorithms that do a much better job of reproducing images taken from functional MRI scans. The team trains its network to recreate images by feeding it the visual cortex scans of someone looking at a picture and asking the network to recreate the original image based on that data. ]

It's like a Convolutional Neural Neural Network. :D
[SFW] [science & technology] [+2]
[by steele@5:19pmGMT]

Comments

midden said @ 5:51pm GMT on 16th May
Very cool. I wonder if it translates at all between different brains, or if the algorithm has to be retrained for each one individually. I'm guessing it would need retraining, but if not, that would say something important about the commonality of neurological representation.
steele said @ 6:04pm GMT on 16th May
I'm pretty sure it won't need retraining. That's the beauty of these suckers. It's not really an algorithm in the sense somebody at down and calculated how to do it, so much as someone figured out the shape the network needs to be and then trained it by shoving data at it until it learns what it's looking for on its own.
midden said[1] @ 6:58pm GMT on 16th May [Score:1 Insightful]
That would surprise me, but would be awfully cool. It seems to me that everyone's visual cortex was trained and the neurons pruned in a unique sequence of sensory stimulations and feedback cues over many years. For instance, I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone who's native writing style was kanji had a vary different encoding of the shapes of the latin alphabet, even if fluent in it. Not that it would use a different principle of encoding, but that the particulars of the spacial neuron placements and connections could be very different within the visual cortex. On the other hand, maybe that's what makes training a digital neural network to identify these patterns so powerful; the fact that they recognize the forms based on the principles, regardless of the particular instantiation of those principles.
steele said @ 7:26pm GMT on 16th May
I'm like 99% on this; As long as the training corpus is varied enough, I'm pretty sure the "encoding" among multiple people would be similar enough in the visual cortex for a single well trained net. As the majority of visual cortex's information that it would be looking at would be coming from the optical nerves, the variations among multiple people would likely come from how the visual cortex is accessed by the rest of the brain where the majority of associative processing would take place. And even then, the plasticity of our brain seems to only have so much leeway in how much it's capable of restructuring, short of repairing actual massive damage. After all, there's a reason we tell such similar stories and tropes among different cultures throughout time. For all our talk and pride of individuality an alien species (or AI) would probably still find we all look and think alike. Those friggin specists. ;)
midden said[1] @ 7:34pm GMT on 16th May [Score:1 Interesting]
Makes me think of this movie. Bonus points for the fact that it was an English movie where Clint has to think in Russian to fly the plane.
steele said @ 7:45pm GMT on 16th May
Hmm, read the synopsis. It sounds familiar, but there were so many Airplane movies in the 80s that I cant remember if I've seen it.
mechanical contrivance said @ 7:49pm GMT on 16th May [Score:1 Informative]
You might have played the arcade game.
midden said @ 2:59am GMT on 17th May
I'm pretty sure I saw it in the theater with my dad.
robotroadkill said @ 11:25pm GMT on 16th May
I thought the same thing (decidedly not a neuroscientist here); that the pruning process effectively customized peoples' brains to an annoying extent for generalized applications of this kind of thing, or mind-controlled prosthetics.
steele said @ 12:00am GMT on 17th May [Score:1 Interesting]
Scientists construct first map of how the brain organizes everything we see

You're a snowflake, but so are the rest of us. ;) The general structures are still there.
robotroadkill said @ 12:38am GMT on 17th May
❄️❄️❄️
butthole said @ 1:13am GMT on 17th May
OK, I can't wait until they can just pull visual thoughts from some one's brain. Imagine Stephen King's visual thoughts. I am not a big fan of his, but the thoughts this man must have would be amazing. Ok, now to address the porn thoughts. You have a crush on a woman, or man, so now that you have her image in your head, you can now think/visualize a porn of that person doing whatever you want. It can be pulled then put on disc/etc to watch again later, or share.

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