seeing your thoughts and dreams...

This is one of the most unnerving and fascinating developments in research that I have ever come across. Some scientists at UC Berkeley have managed to reconstruct images of what people are looking at by scanning their brains using fMRI. A sample video shows you what the volunteers were watching, and what the reconstruction managed - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/brain-scan-movie-scenes_n_97658...

The reconstructed images are rather blurry because they used 18 million seconds of random youtube videos as the resource (which had no overlap with what the volunteers were actually watching), and the system averaged between the most similar clips to generate the images. however they are still astoundingly accurate, especially given that the fMRI is just analysing blood flow to the different parts of the brain. The researchers hope that this technology will eventually help stroke patients by revealing mental states, dreams, hallucinations etc. The paper is avalable here: https://sites.google.com/site/gallantlabucb/publications/nishimoto-et-al...

Of course if this technology does progress, it definitely won't just be stroke patients using it. Ethan Zuckerman made an interesting link on his blog [http://tinyurl.com/5u3ue4p ] to the Wim Wenders film 'Until the End of the World' which has a version of this very technology as it's central theme. It was considered extremely speculative sci-fi when it was released of course (!) but the ramifications that it explores may turn out to be prescient.

According to a synopsis of the film (I haven't seen it, but want to now), the main characters use this technology, which appears to be benign, to help a blind woman to 'see' the world again. This involves them recording their own internal visual experiences, and by and by they become drawn into and then addicted to watching their own dreams. They end up 'drowning in their own nocturnal imagery' and become oblivious to other people and the problems of the real world. They are eventually cured of this 'disease of images', but their emotional relationships remain shattered. the technology that seemed to promise closer connection brought disconnection. [full synopsis is at www.imagesjournal.com/issue01/features/uteotw.htm ]

Of course, Wim Wemders was commenting on contemporary visual culture and the alienation of modern life, and perhaps the 'society of the spectacle' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Spectacle] and so the film shouldn't be read as a prediction of this technology or it's outcomes. there is an unsettling level of psychological plausibility though, and an interesting exploration of long-term, unintended consequences.