July 08, 2004

• I was a bit confused - so they are learning to recognise the patterns in brain activity before the monkey does X thing? Seems very specific.
• Interesting. Recently there has been a series of experiments gradually zeroing in on the possibility of, essentially, reading minds. I reckon it's still a moot point how far this can be done even in animals, let alone human beings, where conscious thought is another game altogether. Many people (and I think I'm one) believe it will never be possible to read off in detail what an individual human being is thinking about, but the scientists keep making very gradual progress.
• you can infer what a person is thinking by the way he/she moves, facial expressions, posture, environment, history, etc. Why would you not be able to add more sets of (more precise?) variables to increase the details?
• No doubt you can, up to a point, and I don't doubt that in the final analysis brains themselves are in principle 'readable'. I just doubt whether there is a general decoding process which works for every individual and yields really specific intentional content (rather than general emotional tone). But that's just my guess, and I concede that I could be proved wrong.
• More details here (PDF).
• "Implanting chips in the parietal cortex might yield unexpected side-effects, cautions Donoghue. Suppose you planned to shake your boss's hand, but thought transiently about slapping him in the face. The slap could happen."
• Richard Anderson.
• "The three animals involved in the study have been retired to an animal sanctuary."
• Rats' brain waves could find trapped people
• Mind-reading machine knows what you see
• Big difference between moving a lever and determining whether someone's aware of anything. This seems to be a speculative piece about grasping bananas which still dangle beyond anyone's current reach. If I'm thinking of nothing am I aware? If I'm thinking of nothing can I be said to be aware of something? And what do these things mean in terms of brain activity of someone who's apparently non-responsive to external stimuli? I suspect this is rather more tricky than the article suggests.
• MonkeyFilter: Grasping bananas which still dangle beyond anyone's current reach.
• MIND READING MACHINE ON EBAY!
• Ooo! After finding the time machine and the shrinking machine in my house, i started to think what other stuff might be hidden away in my home. Aye, y've caught a big one, all right, homunculus -- nice work!
• Actually, the guy on Mind Hacks caught this one. MH has become a daily fix for me.