Re: Re: More on reconstruction from brain activity
Hi Telmo Menezes This is truly amazing wizardry. [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 12/24/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Telmo Menezes Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-12-22, 07:27:42 Subject: Re: More on reconstruction from brain activity Hi Roger, On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 1:07 PM, Roger Clough wrote: 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. Yup, there are other applications too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface 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, I am not a neuroscientist (just a computer scientist), but from my understanding of how the brain works, static images might actually be harder. The brain is constantly trying to do pattern matching and anticipating future states, so it might never really work with static images (unless you read directly from the optic nerve). Have you ever had this thing where you're sitting in a room and an object suddenly seems to appear out of nowhere? Some people do, and the reason is that the brain is only paying attention to a subset of your visual field, and making up all the other stuff from pattern matching with previous experiences. Suddenly it notices the object and has to update your visual representation in a less-graceful way. 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. Well, marry Christmas to you and your lady friend (from an annoying agnostic/atheist). [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
Re: More on reconstruction from brain activity
Hi Roger, On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 1:07 PM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: 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. Yup, there are other applications too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface 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, I am not a neuroscientist (just a computer scientist), but from my understanding of how the brain works, static images might actually be harder. The brain is constantly trying to do pattern matching and anticipating future states, so it might never really work with static images (unless you read directly from the optic nerve). Have you ever had this thing where you're sitting in a room and an object suddenly seems to appear out of nowhere? Some people do, and the reason is that the brain is only paying attention to a subset of your visual field, and making up all the other stuff from pattern matching with previous experiences. Suddenly it notices the object and has to update your visual representation in a less-graceful way. 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. Well, marry Christmas to you and your lady friend (from an annoying agnostic/atheist). [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] rclo...@verizon.net] 12/21/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - *From:* Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com *Receiver:* everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com *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
