Brain activity decoder can reveal stories in people's minds
May 2023, phys.org
Semantic decoder can translate a person's brain activity -- while listening to a story or silently imagining telling a story -- into a continuous stream of text to help people who are mentally conscious yet unable to physically speak, such as those debilitated by strokes, to communicate intelligibly again.Does not require subjects to have surgical implants (ie noninvasive, holy grail of brain stuff).Brain activity is measured using an fMRI scanner after extensive training of the decoder, in which the individual listens to 15 hours of podcasts in the scanner.Later, provided that the participant is open to having their thoughts decoded, their listening to a new story or imagining telling a story allows the machine to generate corresponding text from brain activity alone.
Back to reality:
The result is not a word-for-word transcript. Instead, researchers designed it to capture the gist. Decoding worked only with cooperative participants who had participated willingly.Results for individuals on whom the decoder had not been trained were unintelligible.If participants on whom the decoder had been trained later put up resistance -- for example, by thinking other thoughts -- results were similarly unusable. Tactics like thinking of animals or quietly imagining telling their own story let participants easily and completely thwart the system.
Afterthoughts:
So you need to insert yourself in an fMRI for this to work. You also need to give permission for it to read your thoughts. But if you think that advances in quantum materials isn't going to put fMRIs in your baseball cap within the next 20 years, then you better start reading "terms and conditions" more carefully from now on. They even mention their tech can be translated to a newer form of MRI called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a "portable brain-imaging system".
via University of Texas at Austin: Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings, Nature Neuroscience (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-023-01304-9
AI tool generates video from brain activity
May 2023, phys.org
On the heels of the UT Austin paper above, although I can't help but be skeptical of this one:
Watching 20 hours worth of movies in an fMRI, plus Stable Diffusion, gets you a dream recorder.
Also, you heard it folks: Dream researcher Daniel Oldis, working with a colleague at the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at the University of Texas, Austin.
Dream researcher.
via Researchers at the National University of Singapore and the Chinese University of Hong Kong: Zijiao Chen et al, Cinematic Mindscapes: High-quality Video Reconstruction from Brain Activity, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2305.11675
 |
| AI Art - Human brain carbon fiber cybernetic biomechanical cymatics 2 - 2023 |
40 Hz vibrations reduce Alzheimer's pathology, symptoms in mouse models
May 2023, phys.org
Non-invasive sensory stimulation of 40 Hz gamma frequency brain rhythms can reduce Alzheimer's disease pathology and symptoms, already shown with light and sound by multiple research groups in mice and humans, can now extend to tactile stimulation.The MIT group is not the first to show that gamma frequency tactile stimulation can affect brain activity and improve motor function, but they are the first to show that the stimulation can also reduce levels of the hallmark Alzheimer's protein phosphorylated tau, keep neurons from dying or losing their synapse circuit connections, and reduce neural DNA damage."This work demonstrates a third sensory modality that we can use to increase gamma power in the brain"
In case you were wondering:
To produce the vibration stimulation, the researchers placed mouse cages over speakers playing 40 Hz sound, which vibrated the cages. Mice received six weeks of vibration stimulation.
And since this all sounds so dubious, we need some background:
In a series of papers starting in 2016, a collaboration led by Tsai's lab has demonstrated that light flickering and/or sound clicking at 40 Hz (a technology called GENUS for Gamma Entrainment Using Sensory stimuli), reduces levels of amyloid-beta and tau proteins, prevents neuron death and preserves synapses and even sustains learning and memory in a variety of Alzheimer's disease mouse models.
Upcoming: MIT spin-off company Cognito Therapeutics has launched stage III clinical trials of light and sound stimulation as an Alzheimer's treatment.
Reminder: You don't need FDA approval for tactile stimulation. (As opposed to light or sound pulses, and as opposed to all the Alzheimer's drugs out there trying to get to market...).
via Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Aging Brain Initiative at MIT: Ho-Jun Suk et al, Vibrotactile stimulation at gamma frequency mitigates pathology related to neurodegeneration and improves motor function, Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2023.1129510
Exploring how psychedelic drugs affect a rat's brain
Aug 2023, phys.org
"Simultaneous Synchronization"
Researchers at Lund University have developed a technique for simultaneously measuring electrical signals from 128 areas of the brain in awake rats. They have then used the information to measure what happens to the neurons when the rats are given psychedelic drugs. The results show an unexpected and simultaneous synchronization among neurons in several regions of the brain.
But wait, because there's more:
Pär Halje and the research team was studying rats with Parkinson's disease that had problems with involuntary movements. The researchers discovered a tone -- an oscillation or wave in the electrical fields -- of 80 hertz in the brains of the rats with Parkinson's disease. It turned out that the wave was closely connected to the involuntary movements.
Now you know, 80 hertz. Although the above study said 40 hertz.
One important note on how this was done and why it's a big deal:
"For several of these areas, it is the first time anyone has successfully shown how individual neurons are affected by LSD in awake animals."
We see that the neurons' activity synchronizes itself in a special way -- the waves in the brain go up and down essentially simultaneously in all parts of the brain where we are able to take measurements. This suggests that there are other ways in which the waves are communicated than through chemical synapses, which are relatively slow."
via Lund University: Ivani Brys et al, 5-HT2AR and NMDAR psychedelics induce similar hyper-synchronous states in the rat cognitive-limbic cortex-basal ganglia system, Communications Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-023-05093-6
No comments:
Post a Comment