Hi Telmo Menezes You're right, I got the scanning part all wrong.
You can find sites that may tell more by Googling on Reconstruction from brain activity Apparently they use complex brain modelling programs with complex AI to somehow get images. While they have had some (presumably limited) success on moving images, trying to do that with static images would be the first thing to try, but even that looks like voodoo to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_identification gives an overall treatment of reading thoughts. One of my lady friend's relatives is doing brain modelling at U MD in Baltimore, I suspect that he might be into such stuff. [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 12/21/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Telmo Menezes Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-12-20, 06:17:25 Subject: Re: How visual images are produced in the brain. Was Dennett rightafter all ? Hi Roger, I accidentally sent the previous email before I was done, sorry. Please consider this more complete version of the intended whole: Hi Telmo, Those images in the videoclips, while still remarkable, probably were constructed simply by monitoring sensory MRI signals just as one might from a video camera, and displaying them as a raster pattern, artificially converting the time voltage signal into a timespace signal. Ok. We're not even sure what we're looking at. The brain is a gigantic^n kludge. We are seeing stuff happening in the visual cortex that can be meaningfully mapped to images. This stuff correlates with what the subject is seeing, but in a weird way. So we can speculate that we're watching, for example, a pattern matching process taking place. The most spectacular thing for me is when we see the anticipation of the ink blot explosion. That's something you wouldn't get from a video camera (but you could get from a computer running a sophisticated AI). Perception of the moving image from a given perspective by the brain might take place in the following way : 1) FIRSTNESS (The eye). The initial operation in processing the raw optical signal is reception of the sensory signal. This is necessarily done by a monad (you or me), because only monads see the world from a given perspective. In my opinion you are conflating intelligence and consciousness. I see two separate issues: 1) The human being as an agent senses things, assigns symbols to them, compares them with his memories and so on. The brain tries to anticipate all possible futures and then choses actions that are more likely to lead to a future state that it prefers. This preference can be ultimately reduced to pain avoidance / pleasure seeking. In my view, the fundamental pain and pleasure signals have to be encoded some how in our DNA, and were selected to optimise our chances of reproduction. All this is 3p and can be emulated by a digital computer. Some of it already is. 2) There is a "me" here observing the universe from my perspective. I am me and not you. There's a consciousness inside my body, attached to my mind (or is it my mind)? I suspect there's one inside other people too, but I cannot be sure. This is a 1p phenomena and outside the realm of science. It cannot be explained by MRI machines and clever algorithms - although many neuroscientists fail to realise it. This mystery is essentially what makes me an agnostic more than an atheist. If there is a god, I suspect he's me (and you). In a sense. You can have 1 without 2, the famous zombie. This is not a visual display, only a complex sensory signal. 2) SECONDNESS (the hippocampus ? the cerebellum? ). The next stage is intelligent processing of the optical signal and into a useable expreswion of the visual image. (From the monadology, we find that each monad (you or me) does not perceive the world directly, but is given such a perception by the supreme monad (the One, or God). This supreme monad contains the ability to intelligently construct the visual image from the optical nerve signal) 3) THIRDNESS (cerebrum ?) Knowing this visual expresson by the individual monad according to its individual perspective. This perspective is somehow coordinated with motor muscles (left/right, etc.), but I question that this is an actual 2D or 3D "display," such as in the videoclips. (The videoclips are another matter as they are artificialy constructed.) I agree with you, but maybe videoclips can still be created from there. If the neural network contains a piece of information A, and this information can be represented by image B, there has to be a function f: A -> B. Of course finding this function (and/or computing it) might be incredibly hard. If there is an actual or simulated display then we are faced with Dennett's problem: the infinite regress of spectators, spectators of spectator, etc. Ok, but here we're back to 1p. But if there is no display, we do not need an observer self, and are possibly ending up with Michael Dennett's materialist concept of the self. This might be called epi-phenominalism. The self is simply an expression of the brain. I don't believe it is just an expression of the brain (I suspect you don't either), but part of the reason why I don't believe is 1p, so I cannot communicate it (can I?). I don't know. I tried at dinner parties and got funny looks. I do not at present know the answer. [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 12/19/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Roger Clough Receiver: Roger Clough Time: 2012-12-19, 07:45:31 Subject: On those remarkable videoclips of visual perception Hi Telmo, Those images in the videoclips, while still remarkable, might have beer constructed simply by monitoring, just as one might from a video camera, the MRI signals in the optical nerve as a function of time, and displaying them as a raster pattern, which turns the time voltage signal artificially into a timespace signal. Obviously the brain achieves the same result, but I find it hard to believe that it convergts the time signal into a timespace signal using a raster pattern display. [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 12/19/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Roger Clough Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-12-18, 10:53:11 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: I am my memory, which is provided by my 1p. Hi Telmo Menezes Thank you so much ! What an achievement ! Hard to believe. [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 12/18/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Telmo Menezes Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-12-18, 03:34:31 Subject: Re: Re: Re: I am my memory, which is provided by my 1p. Hi Roger, Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nsjDnYxJ0bo On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 7:49 PM, Roger Clough <rclo...@verizon.net> wrote: Hi Telmo Menezes It would be good if they showed a video clip. [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 12/17/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Telmo Menezes Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-12-17, 11:12:16 Subject: Re: Re: I am my memory, which is provided by my 1p. Hi again Roger, It's a bit better than that. A machine learning algorithm is trained to decode neural activation signals. The training is performed by showing the subject known images, and letting the algorithm learn how their neural activity maps to these images. The real magic happens when you show them new stuff, that the algorithm wasn't trained for. To me, the most impressive stuff here is when it fails. If you pay attention to the videos, you will see the algorithm decoding different (but similar images) from what the one being shown to the subject. For example, when faces are shown, different faces are decoded and then start correcting. My speculation is that we are actually seing visual memories conjured by the brain in its pattern matching attempts. My favorite is the ink blot exploding, where you can see the brain anticipating the explosion, so you get to see a visual of the subject imagining a likely future state. On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 4:24 PM, Roger Clough <rclo...@verizon.net> wrote: Hi Telmo Menezes I think that is a misleading article. If it's fMRI, you don't see the riginal video clip as an eye would see it, you see an image of brain activity. [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 12/17/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Telmo Menezes Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-12-11, 11:04:13 Subject: Re: I am my memory, which is provided by my 1p. My memory is the identity of my 1p and is what my 1p sees. This is perhaps the most serioous problem of comp. Frankly .... I can understand people not convinced that a computer can have a quale associated to the memory, but memory and personal memory does not pose any problem in computers. Then I have explained why they have a quale too. This is not even theoretical anymore. Here's a rather compelling example of visual information in human brains being uploaded into a computer: http://gizmodo.com/5843117/scientists-reconstruct-video-clips-from-brain-activity? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. 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